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The Reserve Capacity Model as a Framework for Understanding Psychosocial Factors in Health Disparities
Author(s) -
Gallo Linda C.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
applied psychology: health and well‐being
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.276
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1758-0854
pISSN - 1758-0846
DOI - 10.1111/j.1758-0854.2008.01000.x
Subject(s) - psychosocial , socioeconomic status , health equity , psychology , resource (disambiguation) , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , gerontology , medicine , environmental health , public health , psychiatry , population , computer network , nursing , computer science
Substantial research has identified a robust, linear association between socioeconomic status (SES) and health, across many different populations and outcomes. Among myriad influences, psychosocial factors may contribute to SES‐related gradients in health. In the current manuscript, we describe the Reserve Capacity Model (Gallo & Matthews, 2003) as a potential framework through which to examine psychosocial pathways in health disparities. The model posits that SES is connected to health, in part through associations with stress and concomitant negative emotions, and their subsequent links with bio‐behavioral functioning. In addition, low SES may predict enhanced emotional and physiological reactivity to stress due to a deficiency in resilient psychosocial resources (i.e. “reserve capacity”) and limited opportunities to replenish resource reserves. In addition, resources might represent a direct mediational pathway from SES to health. We describe several studies in which we have examined various tenets of the Reserve Capacity Model, and comment on future research directions to better understand the roles of psychosocial variables in health disparities.