Proximal Social Determinants of Adolescents’ Health: The Importance of Everyday Life Circumstances

Adolescent health has a significant influence as individuals transition to adulthood and can have lifelong effects on well-being. In addition to well-established structural determinants of health such as racism and poverty, proximal determinants of adolescent health illuminate on the health effects of the daily circumstances of adolescents. Guided by the proximal determinants of adolescent health theory, we examined the association between adolescents’ self-rated health and multiple domains of proximal determinants, including family relations, peer relationships, school environment, and neighborhood environment. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we analyzed 3,444 adolescents who were 14 to 15 years old. Results of ordered logistic regression analyses revealed significant associations between proximal determinants and adolescents’ self-rated health even when taking into account all the domains simultaneously. This study highlights the importance of unraveling factors of multiple systems on adolescents’ health and suggests implications for their subsequent transition to adulthood.