Social capital interventions in public health : A systematic review

Despite two decades of research on social capital and health, intervention studies remain scarce. We performed a systematic review on social capital interventions in public health and searched the Pubmed and PsychInfo databases. The majority of interventions we identified focused on individual level change (e.g. encouraging social participation), as opposed to community level change.

We included 17 manuscripts in the systematic review. We categorized studies according to the role of social capital in the interventions (as the direct target of intervention, as a channel/mediator, or as a segmenting variable) as well as the levels of interventions (individual, community levels vs. multilevel ).

We conclude that the majority of interventions sought to directly strengthen social capital to influence health outcomes. Our review reveals (i) a lack of studies that incorporate a multilevel perspective and (ii) an absence of consideration of specific groups that might selectively benefit from social capital interventions (segmentation). Future research is needed on both questions to provide a more nuanced picture of how social capital can be manipulated to affect health outcomes.

Highlights

• Intervention studies on social capital remain scarce.

• We characterized studies considering levels and role of social capital.

• There is a lack of studies that incorporate multilevel perspectives.

• No study considers specific groups in the interventions.

• Future research is needed on both questions.