Introduction to the special section

Abstract

Social scientists have long recognized the value of social networks, i.e., ties between individuals, organizations, or groups, for influencing a variety of outcomes, including health [1]. In the late 1960s, Coleman, Katz, and Menzel’s book, Medical Innovation, brought attention to interpersonal connections as potential pathways for information spread between healthcare professionals with a landmark study of physician adoption of a prescription drug. That book not only underscored the possibility of interpersonal influence at the time but also has yielded decades of subsequent consideration by scholars, as evidenced by numerous efforts to reanalyze the original study data, e.g., Burt [2],...