Extending Fundamental Cause Theory to Holistic Health

Fundamental Cause Theory (FCT) offers a unique middle range and longitudinal understanding of the lasting social causational relationships between certain social conditions and disease/death. In this research note, I argue that FCT should extend its outcome measures beyond physical disease and death into holistic health. I briefly review how FCT is evaluated, explore the proposed extension and discuss some operational and conceptual challenges using mental illness and positive mental health outcomes as exemplars. I conclude by discussing the benefits of extending FCT for 1) the theory's own validity, 2) social health inequalities research more broadly, and 3) public health policy.