About the Socio-Ecological Model | Leadership Education in Maternal & Child Public Health (2024)

FAQs

What is the Socio-Ecological Model of maternal health? ›

The Socio-Ecological Model allows solutions to be multi-faceted, and institutions to work with communities and individuals to solve the issues of maternal mortality within the United States.

The social ecological model understands health to be affected by the interaction between the individual, the group/community, and the physical, social, and political environments (Israel et al., 2003; Sallis et al., 2008; Wallerstein et al., 2003).

The social ecological model illustrates the importance of networks of people and structures that surround a child or adolescent, safeguarding their well-being and sense of agency, and supporting their optimal development.

The Socio-Ecological Model takes into consideration the individual, and their affiliations to people, organizations, and their community at large to be effective. There are five stages to this model – Individual, Interpersonal, Organizational, Community, and Public Policy.

Some examples are: Political and economic policies that support the importance of parent's roles in their children's development such as Head Start or Women Infants and Children programs.

Socio-ecological models make several assumptions. Firstly, they assume that human society is deeply intertwined with the natural world, leading to complex problems such as overfishing, deforestation, and climate change .

Strengths of the social-ecological model include integrating human decisions with environmental impacts. Limitations involve challenges like uncertainty management, scaling issues, and inadequate representation of the human dimension.

The socioecological model of health and wellness emphasizes the interrelationship between individuals and their environment, and includes environmental factors such as the built environment, relationships with other people, and community resources.

The framework typically includes 5 levels of influence: (1) intrapersonal (eg, individual, athlete), (2) interpersonal (eg, athletic trainer [AT], coach, parent, athletic director), (3) organizational (eg, community, school), (4) environmental (eg, cultural norms, physical environment), and (5) policy (eg, state high ...

What are the 5 spheres of the socio-ecological model? ›

This figure illustrates one example of the Social-Ecological Model, which includes five levels: the individual/intrapersonal sphere, the interpersonal sphere, the organizational/institutional sphere, the community sphere, and the policy sphere (McLeroy, Bibeau, Steckler, & Glanz, 1988).

The Socio-ecological Model as Conceptual Framework

The model assumes that interactions between individuals and their environment are reciprocal, implying that an individual is influenced by his/her environment and the environment is infl uenced by the individual.

The model posits that the individual and the environment are reciprocal, thus the individual influences their environment and vice versa. It also postulates that the environment is comprised of multiple levels, which include the individual, interpersonal relationships, the community, and policy.

The social ecological model conceptualizes health broadly and focuses on multiple factors that might affect health. This broad approach to thinking of health, advanced in the 1947 Constitution of the World Health Organization, includes physical, mental, and social well-being (World Health Organization, 1947).

Social-ecological systems are complex adaptive systems in which people and nature are inextricably linked, in which both the social and ecological components exert strong influence over outcomes. The social dimension includes actors, institutions, cultures and economies, including livelihoods.

Socio-Ecological Model

The levels of influence on behavior can be summarized by the socio-ecological framework. This framework recognizes that behavior change can be achieved through activities that target four levels: Individual, interpersonal (family/peer), community and social/structural.

The “socio-ecological model” (the Ecology of Human Development) was developed by psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner in the late 1970s, as a way to recognize that individuals affect and are affected by a complex range of social influences and nested environmental interactions.

Studies indicate that women with lower socioeconomic status exhibit higher rates of maternal morbidity and mortality, largely attributed to limited access to healthcare services throughout their pregnancy journey (Stephens et al., 2019).