Making Population Health Accessible: Teaching the Social Determinants of Health to Nursing and Health Sciences Students

Abstract

The Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) are increasingly integrated into health professions curricula. As a result, public health educators are often tasked with teaching these concepts to students outside their discipline, including those in nursing and health sciences. This article describes a fully asynchronous online module that uses applied data analysis and visualization to enhance undergraduate understanding of SDOH across disciplinary boundaries. The module incorporated active learning strategies, engaging students in hands-on mapping, analysis, and structured reflection using real-world data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Census Bureau, and Feeding America. Students created maps, correlation matrices, and scatterplots in Microsoft Excel while exploring the implications of health disparities. Survey results showed statistically significant improvements in self-reported understanding of SDOH among nursing and health sciences students. Most students rated the module as more engaging and effective than traditional instructional approaches. These findings suggest that fundamental data analysis and basic mapping activities can serve as an effective pedagogical bridge for teaching complex population health concepts to students without prior training in public health. This instructional approach offers a scalable, accessible model for integrating SDOH into interdisciplinary health professions education.