Stephen H Linder
Biographic Data
| ID | 1322904 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen H Linder |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen H |
| FAMILY NAME | Linder |
| SIGNATURE | LINDER S H |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1316-4496 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 368 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Multilevel Analysis of the Food and Physical Activity Environment and Adult Obesity Across U.S. Counties and States
Adult obesity rates have risen steadily across the United States over the past decade, with more than 40% of adults affected. Persistent geographic and demographic disparities exist in obesity prevalence across the nation. While prior research has examined individual or environmental associated factors of obesity, limited studies have addressed both physical activity and food environments across the nation using multilevel approaches. This cross-…
Trends and Correlates of Breakthrough Infections With Sars-CoV-2
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) delta variant has been hypothesized to decrease the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. Factors associated with infections with SARS-CoV-2 after vaccination are unknown. In this observational cohort study, we examined two groups in Harris County, Texas: (1) individuals with positive Nucleic Acid Amplification test between 12/14/2020 and 9/30/2021 and (2) the subset of individuals fully v…
Wellness project implementation within Houston’s Faith and Diabetes initiative: A mixed methods study
Initial commitment from faith organizations' leadership and volunteers may not suffice to implement even relatively short and low cost health promotion programs. Faith organizations might benefit from realistic previews about just how challenging it is to make these programs a sufficiently high organizational and individual priority
Resolving disputes among inter-professional codes of ethics
A Population-Based Approach to Mapping Vulnerability to Diabetes
Of the 382 million people worldwide with diabetes, and if current trends continue, nearly half a billion people worldwide will have diabetes by 2035. Two-thirds of current diabetics are living in urban centers and the urban concentration of individuals with diabetes is on the rise. The problem is that in the absence of widespread clinical testing, there is no reliable way to predict which segments of the population are the most vulnerable to the …
Methods for Evaluating the Combined Effects of Chemical and Nonchemical Exposures for Cumulative Environmental Health Risk Assessment
Cumulative risk assessment (CRA) has been proposed as a means of evaluating possible additive and synergistic effects of multiple chemical, physical and social stressors on human health, with the goal of informing policy and decision-making, and protecting public health. Routine application of CRA to environmental regulatory and policy decision making, however, has been limited due to a perceived lack of appropriate quantitative approaches for as…
Participants’ perceptions of interactions with community health workers who promote behavior change: A qualitative characterization from participants with normal, depressive and anxious mood states
Participants' perceptions indicated that positive personal changes were influenced by CHWs. Only participants who reported consistently poor scores for depression, anxiety or both reported negative or neutral experiences with the CHWs. This study lends qualitative support to the use of CHWs as extenders of care, particularly in areas that have a shortage of primary and mental health care providers
Cumulative risk assessment
This chapter focuses on the potential of cumulative risk assessment (CRA) to improve policy decisions about environmental justice. The collective nature of CRA embodies several contemporary and distinct ideas. First, harmful entities (e.g. environmental stressors, levels of toxicity), events (e.g. duration and frequency of exposure), and outcomes (e.g. discomfort, dysfunction, disability, disease) accumulate, causing aggregate quantities of multi…
Area-level Socioeconomic Inequalities in the Use of Mammography Screening: A Multilevel Analysis of the Health of Houston Survey
Predictors of Serious Psychological Distress in an Urban Population
While there are state and national estimates of serious psychological distress (SPD), these are not useful for targeting local mental health interventions or for addressing the needs of sub-populations at increased risk for SPD. This cross-sectional study uses data from the population-based 2010 Health of Houston Survey (n = 5,116) to examine (1) the prevalence of SPD and its determinants in Houston area and (2) predictors of the utilization of m…
Health inequities in environmental justice communities: Relevant indicators to reflect a variety of health threats
Residents of environmental justice (EJ) communities often suffer significant health inequities due to pollutants and to adverse social conditions. However, methodologies for assessing such communities seldom account for both kinds of factors. While traditional environmental health risk assessments use single-pollutant, single-source measures of chronic risk alone, this project develops a technique for assessing "overall risk burden" in EJ communi…
Cumulative Risk Assessment for Combined Health Effects From Chemical and Nonchemical Stressors
Cumulative risk assessment is a science policy tool for organizing and analyzing information to examine, characterize, and possibly quantify combined threats from multiple environmental stressors. We briefly survey the state of the art regarding cumulative risk assessment, emphasizing challenges and complexities of moving beyond the current focus on chemical mixtures to incorporate nonchemical stressors, such as poverty and discrimination, into t…
Conceptual Models for Cumulative Risk Assessment
In the absence of scientific consensus on an appropriate theoretical framework, cumulative risk assessment and related research have relied on speculative conceptual models. We argue for the importance of theoretical backing for such models and discuss 3 relevant theoretical frameworks, each supporting a distinctive “family” of models. Social determinant models postulate that unequal health outcomes are caused by structural inequalities; health d…
Views of Negativity in U.S. Newspaper Coverage of the Canadian Health System: How Health Policy Experts on Opposite Sides of the 49th Parallel See It
To assess newspaper coverage of the Canadian health system, thirty-four U.S. and Canadian health policy experts rated the neutrality of the headlines drawn from all major news stories in The New York Times ( NYT) and The Wall Street Journal ( WSJ) during a five-year period, excluding opinion pieces and editorials. Coverage of the Canadian health system by the WSJ and NYT was judged as overwhelmingly negative by our sample of policy experts. But t…
Cashing-in on Risk Claims: On the For-profit Inversion of Signifiers for “Global Warming” An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2003 Hamburg Conference “Does Discourse Matter? Discours…
International environmental groups and a few Western governments have invested considerable resources in the social marketing of risk claims about global warming and climate change. These claims appear in novel forms of public service adverts that combine images and text in dramatic narratives of warning, natural disaster and moral responsibility. Although a few narratives mention government's regulatory role in mitigation, most speak to individu…
Coming to Terms with Intramural Differences Over Policy Frameworks: How Policy Researchers Accommodate Rival Claims Among their Peers
Coming to Terms With the Public-Private Partnership: A Grammar of Multiple Meanings
This essay critically examines the multiple meanings that the term, public-private (P-P) partnership, assumes in contemporary discussions. A brief deconstruction of this term not only clarifies these meanings, but also exposes to scrutiny their underlying premises and ideological commitments. Six distinct uses of the term are identified and linked to their respective meanings in neoconservative and neoliberal ideologies. Instead of focusing on pa…
Contending discourses in the electric and magnetic fields controversy: The social construction of EMF risk as a public problem
An Institutional Approach to the Theory of Policy-Making: The Role of Guidance Mechanisms in Policy Formulation
The premise of this paper is that the revision of the stages metaphor for the public policy-making process is best undertaken from an institutional rather than individualist approach to analysis. The theoretical linkage between policy formulation and information - including feedback about performance at other stages as well as the results of social research - is mediated at the level of the policy formulating institution by complex learning and a…
Implementation as a Guide to Policy Formulation: A Question of 'When' Rather Than 'Whether
Instruments of Government: Perceptions and Contexts
Government uses a wide variety of instruments to reach its policy goals, ranging from indirect methods, such as moral suasion and cash inducements, to more direct ones involving government provision of services. Although there has been a fair amount of writing on the nature and use of various policy instruments, there is very little work on either the meaning ascribed to these instruments by the decisionmakers who use them (or the experts who des…
Managing Support for Social Research and Development: Research Goals, Risk, and Policy Instruments
The purpose of this article is to introduce an analytical framework that addresses several of the shortcomings attributed to the federal “model” for managing social research and development and, more specifically, refocuses attention on the importance of the link between the choice of support instrument and the goals of research funding. In so doing, this framework offers a different view of the function of support instruments and assesses the po…
A Reassessment of the Additive Scoring of Health Practices
Over the past 20 years, investigators have been refining the connection between behavioral practices, popularly known as health habits, and health status. Repeated study has demonstrated that the number of healthful practices, regardless of which ones are adopted, provides a reliable predictor of mortality. Few studies, however, have questioned the validity of summing such diverse practices as smoking and physical activity together to form a sing…
The Analysis of Design or the Design of Analysis
The policy sciences have advanced in the past by introspection, and there appears to be a need for a return to such self-conscious examination of the field of inquiry. A design orientation offers a useful framework for such an examination. It requires reconsideration of some of the fundamental premises of policy inquiry. This article explores what impact design might have on the conventional process framework and then proceeds to discuss the deve…
Evaluation of a Communications Program to Increase Adoption of Vasectomy in Guatemala
Jane T. Bertrand, Roberto Santiso, Stephen H. Linder, Maria Antonieta Pineda, Evaluation of a Communications Program to Increase Adoption of Vasectomy in Guatemala, Studies in Family Planning, Vol. 18, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1987), pp. 361-370
Instruments of Government: Perceptions and Contexts
Government uses a wide variety of instruments to reach its policy goals, ranging from indirect methods, such as moral suasion and cash inducements, to more direct ones involving government provision of services. Although there has been a fair amount of writing on the nature and use of various policy instruments, there is very little work on either the meaning ascribed to these instruments by the decisionmakers who use them (or the experts who des…
From Social Theory to Policy Design
Little attention has been given in policy analysis to the creative process of designing solutions to public policy problems. There are a number of difficulties in applying macro-level theories – whether from economics, sociology, philosophy or macro-systems theory – in the policy process. Any macro-level theory will tend to provide inadequate guidance in one or more of three aspects of policy-making: a model of causation, a model for evaluating a…
A Design Perspective on Policy Implementation: The Fallacies of Misplaced Prescription
Implementation has been used to try to explain too much, particularly that policy formulation should be oriented around implementation. The concentration on implementation has added little to our theoretical understanding of policymaking. Implementation studies have taken either "The Horrors of War" or "The Search for Theory" views. The latter has four major views, none of which is adequate. The best approach is to treat implementation as only on…
Coming to Terms With the Public-Private Partnership: A Grammar of Multiple Meanings
This essay critically examines the multiple meanings that the term, public-private (P-P) partnership, assumes in contemporary discussions. A brief deconstruction of this term not only clarifies these meanings, but also exposes to scrutiny their underlying premises and ideological commitments. Six distinct uses of the term are identified and linked to their respective meanings in neoconservative and neoliberal ideologies. Instead of focusing on pa…
The Analysis of Design or the Design of Analysis
The policy sciences have advanced in the past by introspection, and there appears to be a need for a return to such self-conscious examination of the field of inquiry. A design orientation offers a useful framework for such an examination. It requires reconsideration of some of the fundamental premises of policy inquiry. This article explores what impact design might have on the conventional process framework and then proceeds to discuss the deve…
An Institutional Approach to the Theory of Policy-Making: The Role of Guidance Mechanisms in Policy Formulation
The premise of this paper is that the revision of the stages metaphor for the public policy-making process is best undertaken from an institutional rather than individualist approach to analysis. The theoretical linkage between policy formulation and information - including feedback about performance at other stages as well as the results of social research - is mediated at the level of the policy formulating institution by complex learning and a…
Cashing-in on Risk Claims: On the For-profit Inversion of Signifiers for “Global Warming” An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2003 Hamburg Conference “Does Discourse Matter? Discours…
International environmental groups and a few Western governments have invested considerable resources in the social marketing of risk claims about global warming and climate change. These claims appear in novel forms of public service adverts that combine images and text in dramatic narratives of warning, natural disaster and moral responsibility. Although a few narratives mention government's regulatory role in mitigation, most speak to individu…
Contending discourses in the electric and magnetic fields controversy: The social construction of EMF risk as a public problem
Cumulative Risk Assessment for Combined Health Effects From Chemical and Nonchemical Stressors
Cumulative risk assessment is a science policy tool for organizing and analyzing information to examine, characterize, and possibly quantify combined threats from multiple environmental stressors. We briefly survey the state of the art regarding cumulative risk assessment, emphasizing challenges and complexities of moving beyond the current focus on chemical mixtures to incorporate nonchemical stressors, such as poverty and discrimination, into t…
Relativism, Contingency, and the Definition of Success in Implementation Research
Evaluation of a Communications Program to Increase Adoption of Vasectomy in Guatemala
Jane T. Bertrand, Roberto Santiso, Stephen H. Linder, Maria Antonieta Pineda, Evaluation of a Communications Program to Increase Adoption of Vasectomy in Guatemala, Studies in Family Planning, Vol. 18, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1987), pp. 361-370
Predictors of Serious Psychological Distress in an Urban Population
While there are state and national estimates of serious psychological distress (SPD), these are not useful for targeting local mental health interventions or for addressing the needs of sub-populations at increased risk for SPD. This cross-sectional study uses data from the population-based 2010 Health of Houston Survey (n = 5,116) to examine (1) the prevalence of SPD and its determinants in Houston area and (2) predictors of the utilization of m…
Conceptual Models for Cumulative Risk Assessment
In the absence of scientific consensus on an appropriate theoretical framework, cumulative risk assessment and related research have relied on speculative conceptual models. We argue for the importance of theoretical backing for such models and discuss 3 relevant theoretical frameworks, each supporting a distinctive “family” of models. Social determinant models postulate that unequal health outcomes are caused by structural inequalities; health d…
Coming to Terms with Intramural Differences Over Policy Frameworks: How Policy Researchers Accommodate Rival Claims Among their Peers
Implementation as a Guide to Policy Formulation: A Question of 'When' Rather Than 'Whether
Decision rules and regulatory reform
The regulation of risks to health and the environment in the United States is currently undergoing serious criticism for its impact on the recession economy. Attempts to diminish health risks by placing stringent limitations on potentially harmful substances are thought to be excessively expensive and ineffective. To remedy this problem, basic reforms in the way these regulations are fashioned have been proposed. Perhaps the best known is cost-be…
A second best mechanism for marketing emissions reductions
Perceptions of the Policy-Making Environment: Cognitive Differences Among Administrators in Five Federal Agencies
The bureaucratic environment is widely recognized as an important influence on administrative behavior. Nonetheless, few studies of public agencies have attempted to measure the significance of administrators' perceptions of this environment; perception shapes the understanding and interpretation of the information that premises policy decisions. This study examines the nature of the subjective environment, based on perceptions and beliefs about …
Decision rules and regulatory reform
The regulation of risks to health and the environment in the United States is currently undergoing serious criticism for its impact on the recession economy. Attempts to diminish health risks by placing stringent limitations on potentially harmful substances are thought to be excessively expensive and ineffective. To remedy this problem, basic reforms in the way these regulations are fashioned have been proposed. Perhaps the best known is cost-be…
From Social Theory to Policy Design
Little attention has been given in policy analysis to the creative process of designing solutions to public policy problems. There are a number of difficulties in applying macro-level theories – whether from economics, sociology, philosophy or macro-systems theory – in the policy process. Any macro-level theory will tend to provide inadequate guidance in one or more of three aspects of policy-making: a model of causation, a model for evaluating a…
Better Regulatory Compliance through Environmental Auditing: A Reform Whose Time Has Passed
Better regulatory compliance through environmental auditing: A reform whose time has passed
Evaluation of a Communications Program to Increase Adoption of Vasectomy in Guatemala
Jane T. Bertrand, Roberto Santiso, Stephen H. Linder, Maria Antonieta Pineda, Evaluation of a Communications Program to Increase Adoption of Vasectomy in Guatemala, Studies in Family Planning, Vol. 18, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1987), pp. 361-370
Relativism, Contingency, and the Definition of Success in Implementation Research
A Design Perspective on Policy Implementation: The Fallacies of Misplaced Prescription
Implementation has been used to try to explain too much, particularly that policy formulation should be oriented around implementation. The concentration on implementation has added little to our theoretical understanding of policymaking. Implementation studies have taken either "The Horrors of War" or "The Search for Theory" views. The latter has four major views, none of which is adequate. The best approach is to treat implementation as only on…
Managing Support for Social Research and Development: Research Goals, Risk, and Policy Instruments
The purpose of this article is to introduce an analytical framework that addresses several of the shortcomings attributed to the federal “model” for managing social research and development and, more specifically, refocuses attention on the importance of the link between the choice of support instrument and the goals of research funding. In so doing, this framework offers a different view of the function of support instruments and assesses the po…
A Reassessment of the Additive Scoring of Health Practices
Over the past 20 years, investigators have been refining the connection between behavioral practices, popularly known as health habits, and health status. Repeated study has demonstrated that the number of healthful practices, regardless of which ones are adopted, provides a reliable predictor of mortality. Few studies, however, have questioned the validity of summing such diverse practices as smoking and physical activity together to form a sing…
The Analysis of Design or the Design of Analysis
The policy sciences have advanced in the past by introspection, and there appears to be a need for a return to such self-conscious examination of the field of inquiry. A design orientation offers a useful framework for such an examination. It requires reconsideration of some of the fundamental premises of policy inquiry. This article explores what impact design might have on the conventional process framework and then proceeds to discuss the deve…
Implementation as a Guide to Policy Formulation: A Question of 'When' Rather Than 'Whether
Instruments of Government: Perceptions and Contexts
Government uses a wide variety of instruments to reach its policy goals, ranging from indirect methods, such as moral suasion and cash inducements, to more direct ones involving government provision of services. Although there has been a fair amount of writing on the nature and use of various policy instruments, there is very little work on either the meaning ascribed to these instruments by the decisionmakers who use them (or the experts who des…
An Institutional Approach to the Theory of Policy-Making: The Role of Guidance Mechanisms in Policy Formulation
The premise of this paper is that the revision of the stages metaphor for the public policy-making process is best undertaken from an institutional rather than individualist approach to analysis. The theoretical linkage between policy formulation and information - including feedback about performance at other stages as well as the results of social research - is mediated at the level of the policy formulating institution by complex learning and a…
Contending discourses in the electric and magnetic fields controversy: The social construction of EMF risk as a public problem
Coming to Terms With the Public-Private Partnership: A Grammar of Multiple Meanings
This essay critically examines the multiple meanings that the term, public-private (P-P) partnership, assumes in contemporary discussions. A brief deconstruction of this term not only clarifies these meanings, but also exposes to scrutiny their underlying premises and ideological commitments. Six distinct uses of the term are identified and linked to their respective meanings in neoconservative and neoliberal ideologies. Instead of focusing on pa…
Cashing-in on Risk Claims: On the For-profit Inversion of Signifiers for “Global Warming” An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2003 Hamburg Conference “Does Discourse Matter? Discours…
International environmental groups and a few Western governments have invested considerable resources in the social marketing of risk claims about global warming and climate change. These claims appear in novel forms of public service adverts that combine images and text in dramatic narratives of warning, natural disaster and moral responsibility. Although a few narratives mention government's regulatory role in mitigation, most speak to individu…
Coming to Terms with Intramural Differences Over Policy Frameworks: How Policy Researchers Accommodate Rival Claims Among their Peers
Views of Negativity in U.S. Newspaper Coverage of the Canadian Health System: How Health Policy Experts on Opposite Sides of the 49th Parallel See It
To assess newspaper coverage of the Canadian health system, thirty-four U.S. and Canadian health policy experts rated the neutrality of the headlines drawn from all major news stories in The New York Times ( NYT) and The Wall Street Journal ( WSJ) during a five-year period, excluding opinion pieces and editorials. Coverage of the Canadian health system by the WSJ and NYT was judged as overwhelmingly negative by our sample of policy experts. But t…
Cumulative Risk Assessment for Combined Health Effects From Chemical and Nonchemical Stressors
Cumulative risk assessment is a science policy tool for organizing and analyzing information to examine, characterize, and possibly quantify combined threats from multiple environmental stressors. We briefly survey the state of the art regarding cumulative risk assessment, emphasizing challenges and complexities of moving beyond the current focus on chemical mixtures to incorporate nonchemical stressors, such as poverty and discrimination, into t…
Conceptual Models for Cumulative Risk Assessment
In the absence of scientific consensus on an appropriate theoretical framework, cumulative risk assessment and related research have relied on speculative conceptual models. We argue for the importance of theoretical backing for such models and discuss 3 relevant theoretical frameworks, each supporting a distinctive “family” of models. Social determinant models postulate that unequal health outcomes are caused by structural inequalities; health d…
Health inequities in environmental justice communities: Relevant indicators to reflect a variety of health threats
Residents of environmental justice (EJ) communities often suffer significant health inequities due to pollutants and to adverse social conditions. However, methodologies for assessing such communities seldom account for both kinds of factors. While traditional environmental health risk assessments use single-pollutant, single-source measures of chronic risk alone, this project develops a technique for assessing "overall risk burden" in EJ communi…
Predictors of Serious Psychological Distress in an Urban Population
While there are state and national estimates of serious psychological distress (SPD), these are not useful for targeting local mental health interventions or for addressing the needs of sub-populations at increased risk for SPD. This cross-sectional study uses data from the population-based 2010 Health of Houston Survey (n = 5,116) to examine (1) the prevalence of SPD and its determinants in Houston area and (2) predictors of the utilization of m…
Area-level Socioeconomic Inequalities in the Use of Mammography Screening: A Multilevel Analysis of the Health of Houston Survey
Political science (22 works) · Medicine (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Economics (13 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Business (8 works) · Environmental health (7 works)