Social and emotional learning and physical health outcomes across the lifespan: Little progress & big potential

This conceptual review addresses the question: Can the development of social and emotional competencies contribute to positive long-term health outcomes? Both current research and theory suggests a logical basis on which to hypothesize that building social and emotional competencies could positively influence short and long term physical and behavioral health outcomes. The paper reviews a variety of types of evidence including longitudinal studies that connect childhood competencies and adult health and morbidity, concurrent correlations between social competencies and health in childhood, and short and longer-term outcomes of social and emotional intervention trials. The review concludes that there is a sufficient warrant for this idea, but that very few social and emotional intervention studies have examined health outcomes. The paper conclude withs with recommendations for how to grow the evidence base and its implication for research and policy. There has been little investigation of how social and emotional competencies (SECs) and interventions might affect physical health across the lifespan. This paper reviews current evidence on the relationship of SECS and interventions to short-term and long-term health outcomes and demonstrates a relationship between them. The paper calls for future research to include short and long-term study of health and health indicators.