Theory and empiricism: A comment on “Interrogating the environmental affordances model” by Pamplin and colleagues

Abstract

We strongly support efforts to generate, rigorously test, and falsify hypotheses derived from the Environmental Affordances (EA) Model of Health Disparities, as originated by the late Dr. James S. Jackson (1940Jackson ( -2020. Such efforts are critical to establishing robust, theoretically grounded scientific frameworks that explain the fundamental causes of racial disparities in health and wellbeing. Pamplin et al. ( 2021) fundamentally misrepresents the EA Model as a framework that (falsely) reifies the role of race as a determinant of health behaviors and health outcomes. Further, both their study design and analytic approach are inappropriate for testing predictions of this framework. We address these issues with the goal of recentering the scholarly conversation about how stress contributes to health, and disparities in health, over the life course.

Integrative approaches to methods training for early-career scientists: Rationale and process evaluation of the first cohort of the Michigan Integrative Well-Being and Inequality Training Program

“…However, few investigators have the skills needed to pose and test innovative hypotheses about this intersection, particularly among marginalized groups [ 17 , 28 ]. The result is an incomplete, and potentially inaccurate, understanding of the drivers of health inequities [ 29 , 30 ].…”

Self-Regulatory Coping Behaviors and Stress Reactivity: Exploring the Environmental Affordance Model of Health Disparities

“…The "strong" hypothesis of this buffering effect is that it operates through neurobiological processes, predominantly the HPA-axis (Jackson & Knight, 2006). Analyses using independent samples have provided support for various paths of the EA Model (Boardman & Alexander, 2011;Jackson et al, 2010;Mezuk et al, 2010Mezuk et al, , 2017, although findings are not conclusive (Keyes et al, 2011) and the model is a subject of ongoing debate (Mezuk et al, 2021). In sum, while fundamentally situated within the social sciences, the EA Model provides an integrative, biologically informed, hypothesis-generating framework to guide interdisciplinary research on the ways that chronic stress and health behaviors contribute to mental and physical health, and health disparities, over the life course.…”