Research based on decades of experience in the developing world has identified educational status, especially the status of the mother, as a major predictor of health outcomes and that the literature indicates that the gradient in health outcomes by educational attainment has steepened over the last four decades across the United States. Since the 1990s, while the average life expectancy in the United States has been steadily increasing, life expectancy has actually decreased for people without a high school education, especially white women.

To understand the complex relationship between education and health and how this understanding could inform our nation’s investments and policies, the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Population Health Improvement held a public workshop in Washington, DC, on June 5, 2014. This workshop, which featured presentations and extensive discussion periods, also explored how the health and education sectors can work together more effectively to achieve improvements in both health status and educational achievement. This report summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.