Fig 1.
Workflow for the analytical research performed.
Once a systematic PubMed search procedure has been performed with the Social Determinants of Health MeSH as main parameter and cardiovascular disease terms as modifiers, a series of data curation procedures was made by using e-QAD tool Atlas.TI. The curated corpus was used to obtain data visualizations and to infer semantic-like MeSH Networks [13]. MeSH networks were later analyzed to look up for non-trivial associations. Network and visualization results were then discussed.
Fig 2.
Summary of the World Health Organization’s Social Determinants of Health framework.
Interactions of different levels of causation define the structural and intermediary mechanisms, but also the Health System as a social determinant of health plays an very important role in mediating the different outcomes of diseases that generate health inequities.
Fig 3.
Heatmap visualization of the time evolution of publication activity in the Social Determinants of Health area in different countries.
Principal countries are registered by ascription of article in papers related to Social Determinants of Cardiovascular Disease. Bars represent the sum of articles over the period. We can notice that a few countries contributed the vast majority of papers. Number of papers related to Social Determinants of Cardiovascular Disease published by year. Bars represent all papers published in the field within the given year. We can notice a progressive growth on the number of publications in the field over time.
Fig 4.
Raw MeSH network for SDCD for the period (1980-2015).
This network presents the data structure before a manual curation procedure was performed. From this network, once redundant or biased features were removed we obtain the Curated Global Network shown in Fig 5.
Table 1.
Topological features for the analyzed networks.
N, number of nodes; M, number of edges; CC, clustering coefficient; ℓ, Characteristics path length; k, Avg.number of neighbors; p, network density.
Fig 5.
Curated Global MeSH network for SDCD for the period (1980-2015).
This network and its subnetworks are the main study object of the MeSH network semantic-like analysis of Social Determinants of Cardiovascular Disease.
Fig 6.
Literature mining results for items categorized according with the WHO’s Social Determinants of health classification (Reference [3]).
Histograms represent the connectivity degress for a given MeSH term. Panel A presents terms related to Structural Determinants within the Political and Economical Context, Panel B presents all other Structural Determinants, Panel C shows terms associated with Intermediary Determinants in the context of Health Systems and Panel D presents all other Intermediate Determinants.
Fig 7.
Social Determinants of health subnetwork.
This is a subnetwork built from the global network in Fig 5, including only the Social Determinants of Health MeSH term and its first neighbors (directly connected terms).
Fig 8.
Health status disparities subnetwork.
This is a subnetwork built from the global network in Fig 5, including only the Health Status Disparities MeSH term and its first neighbors.
Fig 9.
This is a subnetwork built from the global network in Fig 5, including only the Health Policy MeSH term and its first neighbors.
Fig 10.
This is a subnetwork built from the global network in Fig 5, including only the World Health Organization MeSH term and its first neighbors.
Fig 11.
This is a subnetwork built from the global network in Fig 5, including only the Global Health MeSH term and its first neighbors.