Introduction to the special issue social influences on physical health: Patterns, mechanisms, and solutions.

The goal with this special issue was to provide a very broad look at how scientists currently conceptualize and research social influences on health, including the application of this knowledge to interventions and public policy. The strength of these articles lies in the various ways in which they highlight promising mechanisms and methods to enhance our understanding of social influences on physical health across multiple levels (e.g., sociocultural, dyadic, and epigenetic). Collectively, the articles provided in this special issue offer a unique opportunity to push our understanding of social relationships and health forward by integrating across both social constructs and health outcomes in order to showcase breadth and commonality in research on this broad and consequential topic. The articles and their overlapping themes are reviewed below, followed by a brief commentary on important considerations and future directions in this very broad area of research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).