The Environmental Science Behind Social Determinants of Health: An Interdisciplinary Perspective for Public Health Equity

Social determinants of health (SDOH), are the non-clinical factors that influence health outcomes in relation to the environment, society, and cultural contexts. They encompass the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age. Recognized domains of SDOH are housing quality, education, employment, access to healthy food, transportation, social environments, and healthcare services. However, despite abundant evidence of their intersection, public health research and environmental science have been mostly treated as parallel rather than integrated pathways. This paper argues that environmental exposures must be embedded within the SDOH framework to fully understand and address public health inequities. Communities in degraded environments-characterized by polluted air, contaminated water, and substandard housing face environmental stressors that compound existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities . These environmental stressors are not distributed equally; they follow lines of structural inequality, zoning bias, and environmental racism. Drawing on frameworks such as the Social Exposome and the Salutogenic Environmental Health Model (SEHM), this paper organizes the relationship between environmental stressors and health outcomes across nine domains: housing, air quality, water safety, waste exposure, climate change, toxicology, infectious disease, transportation, and education. Each domain is illustrated with global and U.S. case studies, including the Flint water crisis, urban heat islands, and disproportionate asthma prevalence in low-income communities. This paper investigates how central environmental science themes, including air and water pollution, toxic exposure, waste management, and climate change, intersect and amplify diverse SDOH domains. This interdisciplinary synthesis also reflects a pedagogical-to-practice approach, integrating insights from environmental science coursework with applied healthcare innovation. Specifically, the NurseAI platform, a digital health tool co-developed by the author, demonstrates how SDOH screening could incorporate environmental risk factors to support nurses and frontline providers in real-time.This research report finds that to improve health equity, we need stronger environmental policies, better integration of health and environmental data, and digital tools that support frontline care workers. By treating environmental exposures as key parts of the social determinants of health, the study shows that environmental science is not just an outside influence but a core factor in building resilience, promoting justice, and improving public health.