The study of social networks is increasingly central to health research for medical sociologists and scholars in other fields. Here, we review the innovations in theory, substance, data collection, and methodology that have propelled the study of social networks and health from a niche subfield to the center of larger sociological and scientific debates. In particular, we contextualize the broader history of network analysis and its connections to health research, concentrating on work beginning in the late 1990s, much of it in this journal. Using bibliometric and network visualization approaches, we examine the subfield’s evolution over this period in terms of topics, trends, key debates, and core insights. We conclude by reflecting on persistent challenges and areas of innovation shaping the study of social networks and health and its intersection with medical sociology in the coming years.

对于医学社会学家和其他领域的学者来说，社交网络的研究日益成为健康研究的核心。在这里，我们回顾了理论、实质、数据收集和方法方面的创新，这些创新推动了社交网络和健康研究从一个利基子领域发展成为更广泛的社会学和科学辩论的中心。特别是，我们将网络分析的更广泛的历史及其与健康研究的联系联系起来，重点关注 20 世纪 90 年代末开始的工作，其中大部分都在本杂志中。使用文献计量和网络可视化方法，我们研究了这一时期该子领域在主题、趋势、关键辩论和核心见解方面的演变。最后，我们反思了未来几年影响社交网络和健康及其与医学社会学交叉研究的持续挑战和创新领域。