Since health is embedded in policies far removed from traditional health policy, success will therefore depend on integrative and collaborative efforts across multiple sectors of society that seek to leverage resources to enhance health. It was earlier noted that black women experienced a large decline in life expectancy decline between 1950 and 2006. This success was likely due to improvements in the SES of African American women. A review of studies of the health effects of the civil rights movement found that black women experienced larger economic gains than black men during the 1960s and 1970s and that during this period of the narrowing of the income gap between blacks and whites, blacks, especially women, experienced larger improvements in health, relatively and absolutely, than whites (Williams et al 2008).
