Towards a Heuristic Research Model Linking Early Socioeconomic Adversity and Youth Cumulative Disease Risk: An Integrative Review

Abstract

This integrative review draws on previous empirical and theoretical work across multiple research traditions, including psychology, sociology, and neurology, to create a framework detailing pathways linking early socioeconomic adversity in childhood and adolescence to subsequent disease risk later in adolescence and young adulthood. A comprehensive search ultimately led to the socioeconomic adversity and disease risk model for youth, which is a heuristic research framework detailing four overarching pathways focused on early biological/genetic vulnerability, physiological responses (comprised of stress responses and hormonal activity), psychosocial resource trajectories, and behavioral and mental health trajectories as well as potential modifiers of these pathways. Other central constructs include brain development/neuroplasticity and adolescent life stressors. The heuristic research framework calls for an integrated perspective taking a long-view over early life course to explain cumulative physical disease risk by combining knowledge from developmental, social, neurocognitive, and biological sciences.