The United States pays more for health care than any other country and yet reaps comparatively fewer health benefits. April is National Minority Health Month, a good time to focus on the negative impact that health disparities affecting racial and ethnic minorities and low income populations have on the nation’s health care bill. The Commonwealth Fund reports that health care costs in the United States represent 17 percent of GDP—or more than $9,000 per person per year.

Twenty years ago, when OBSSR was created by Congress, one of its mandates was to define behavioral and social sciences research to assess and monitor NIH funding in this area. This resulted in a high-level taxonomy of BSSR and delineates basic versus applied behavioral and social sciences research with a range of examples for each. The taxonomy goes on to describe what is meant by “behavioral”—overt actions, psychological processes, and bio-behavioral interactions—and “social”—sociocultural, socioeconomic, biosocial interactions, and various levels of social context.