Community Belonging, Social Resilience, and Long Term Health Outcomes.

Using individual and area level data from NILS and the Northern Ireland Census, I plan to assess the degree to which social resilience can be considered an important factor in long term population health.

Although the link between socioeconomic status (SES) and health is well established, most studies of this relationship focus on how SES affects health behaviors and risk factors within the context of individuals (Meara et al. 2008; Link and Phelan 1995). In recent years, however, Research Team have begun to analyze the relationship between individual health and the social ecosystem of the surrounding community (Marmot et al. 1984; Mays et al. 2007). New evidence suggests that the social resilience of communities may mediate the impact of SES on population health, and that declines in social resilience have contributed to the social and health stagnation of disadvantaged populations (Sonn and Fisher 1998; Adger 2000).

Using the method for quantifying social resilience developed by Sherrieb et al. (2010), I will assess the longitudinal link between individual health outcomes and social resilience. I will calculate Super Output Area proxy measurements of social resilience using the NILS data from the 1981, 1991, 2001, and 2011 Censuses, and then perform a stepwise regression analysis with individual self-reported health from the 2011 Census as my output variable. I hope to determine whether community social resilience is correlated with self-rated health and whether social resilience can be used as a measure for urban areas recovering from long term social upheaval.