Social Determinants of Health and Primary Care Engagement: A Conceptual Mind Genomics Framework

Abstract

Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) encompass interconnected economic, educational, healthcare, environmental, and social conditions that may shape engagement with primary care. Although individual SDOH factors have been widely examined in relation to healthcare access, utilization, prevention, adherence, and health outcomes, less attention has been given to how multiple social and contextual conditions may be perceived when they occur together. This conceptual paper proposes a literature-informed Mind Genomics framework for examining the perceived relevance of multiple SDOH factors to primary-care engagement. The framework organizes relevant conditions into four complementary silos and translates them into a structured, literature-informed set of sixteen elements, providing a basis for examining SDOH factors as multidimensional combinations rather than isolated determinants. Future empirical implementation using BimiLeap, a web-based platform for designing and implementing Mind Genomics studies, could present experimentally designed combinations of these elements as vignettes for respondent evaluation and examine the relative salience of individual elements and patterns of response across individuals and population groups. The proposed framework does not directly measure healthcare utilization, treatment adherence, or causal effects; rather, it provides a structured and testable foundation for investigating how combinations of social and contextual conditions may be perceived in relation to primary-care engagement and for generating hypotheses for future epidemiological and health-services research.