·PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE Taking stock of the social determinants of health: A scoping review Kelsey Lucyk*", Lindsay McLaren® Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada @These authors contributed equally to this work. * klucyk@ucalgary.ca Check for updates G OPEN ACCESS Citation: Lucyk K, McLaren L (2017) Taking stock of the social determinants of health: A scoping review. PLoS ONE 12(5): e0177306. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177306 Editor: Spencer Moore, University of South Carolina, UNITED STATES Received: October 18, 2016 Accepted: April 25, 2017 Published: May 11, 2017 Copyright: @ 2017 Lucyk, McLaren. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All data pertaining to the manuscripts reviewed are within the paper are available to readers in our paper's reference list. Authors can look up the reference or follow the URLs provided from their institutional libraries to access the papers we reviewed. We do not have the capacity or copyright to host all articles as PDF files in a separate repository, and believe that in this case, a reference list will adequately serve the readers' needs. This article also cited one personal communication with 2 academics who authored included papers. The participants agreed to be publicly identified in this quote, as they had the opportunity to review the transcript from their Abstract Background In recent decades, the social determinants of health (SDOH) has gained increasing promi- nence as a foundational concept for population and public health in academic literature and policy documents, internationally. However, alongside its widespread dissemination, and in light of multiple conceptual models, lists, and frameworks, some dilution and confusion is apparent. This scoping review represents an attempt to take stock of SDOH literature in the context of contemporary population and public health. Methods We conducted a scoping review to synthesize and map SDOH literature, informed by the methods of Arksey and O'Malley (2005). We searched 5 academic and 3 grey literature databases for "social determinants of health" and "population health" or "public health" or "health promotion," published 2004-2014. We also conducted a search on "inequity" or "inequality" or "disparity" or "social gradient" and "Canad*" to ensure that we captured arti- cles where this language was used to discuss the SDOH. We included articles that dis- cussed SDOH in depth, either explicitly or in implicit but nuanced ways. We hand-searched reference lists to further identify relevant articles. Findings Our synthesis of 108 articles showed wide variation by study setting, target audience, and geographic scope, with most articles published in an academic setting, by Canadian authors, for policy-maker audiences. SDOH were communicated by authors as a list, model, or story; each with strengths and weaknesses. Thematic analysis identified one theme: health equity as an overarching and binding concept to the SDOH. Health equity was understood in differ- ent ways with implications for action on the