The Gender Pain Gap: gender inequalities in pain across 19 European countries

Aims: Chronic pain is increasingly considered to be an international public health issue – but gender differences in chronic pain in Europe are under-examined. This work aimed to examine gender inequalities in pain across Europe. Methods: Data for 27,552 men and women aged 25-74 years in 19 European countries were taken from the social determinants of health module of the European Social Survey (2014). Inequalities in reporting pain were measured by means of adjusted rate differences (ARD) and relative adjusted rate risks (ARR). Results: At the pooled pan-European level, a greater proportion of women (62.3%) reported pain than men (55.5%) (ARD 5.5% [95% CI 4.1%, 6.9%], ARR 1.10 [95% CI 1.08, 1.13]). These inequalities were greatest for back/neck pain (ARD 5.8% [95% CI 4.4%, 7.1%], ARR 1.15 [95% CI 1.12, 1.19]), but were also significant for hand/arm pain (ARD 4.6% [95% CI 3.5%, 5.7%], ARR 1.24 [95% CI 1.17, 1.30]), and foot/leg pain (ARD 2.6% [95% CI 1.5%, 3.8%], ARR 1.12 [95% CI 1.07, 1.18]). There was considerable cross‐national variation in gender pain inequalities across European countries. Conclusions: Significant gender pain inequalities exist across Europe whereby women experience more pain than men; this was most pronounced for back/neck pain. The extent of the gender pain gap varies by country. The gender pain gap is a public health concern, and should be considered in future prevention and management strategies

Socioeconomic inequalities in childhood overweight: heterogeneity across five countries in the WHO European childhood obesity surveillance initiative (COSI-2008)

Free PMC Article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856730/BACKGROUND: Excess risk of childhood overweight and obesity occurring in socioeconomically disadvantaged families has been demonstrated in numerous studies from high-income regions, including Europe. It is well known that socioeconomic characteristics such as parental education, income and occupation are etiologically relevant to childhood obesity. However, in the pan-European setting, there is reason to believe that inequalities in childhood weight status may vary among countries as a function of differing degrees of socioeconomic development and equity. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, we have examined socioeconomic differences in childhood obesity in different parts of the European region using nationally representative data from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Portugal and Sweden that were collected in 2008 during the first round of the World Health Organization (WHO) European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative. RESULTS: Heterogeneity in the association between parental socioeconomic indicators and childhood overweight or obesity was clearly observed across the five countries studied. Positive as well as negative associations were observed between parental socioeconomic indicators and childhood overweight, with statistically significant interactions between country and parental indicators. CONCLUSIONS: These findings have public health implications for the WHO European Region and underscore the necessity to continue documenting socioeconomic inequalities in obesity in all countries through international surveillance efforts in countries with diverse geographic, social and economic environments. This is a prerequisite for universal as well as targeted preventive actions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Inequities in energy-balance related behaviours and family environmental determinants in European children : baseline results of the prospective EPHE evaluation study

Background: Tackling inequalities in overweight, obesity and related determinants has become a top priority for the European research and policy agendas. Although it has been established that such inequalities accumulate from early childhood onward, they have not been studied extensively in children. The current article discusses the results of an explorative analysis for the identification of inequalities in behaviours and their determinants between groups with high and low socio-economic status. Methods: This study is part of the Epode for the Promotion of Health Equity (EPHE) evaluation study, the overall aim of which is to assess the impact and sustainability of EPODE methodology to diminish inequalities in childhood obesity and overweight. Seven community-based programmes from different European countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Portugal, Romania, The Netherlands) participate in the EPHE study. In each of the communities, children aged 6-8 years participated, resulting in a total sample of 1266 children and their families. A parental self-administrated questionnaire was disseminated in order to assess the socio-economic status of the household, selected energy balance-related behaviours (1. fruit and vegetable consumption; 2. soft drink/fruit juices and water consumption; 3. screen time and 4. sleep duration) of the children and associated family environmental determinants. The Mann-Whitney U test and Pearson's chi-square test were used to test differences between the low and high education groups. The country-specific median was chosen as the cut-off point to determine the educational level, given the different average educational level in every country. Results: Children with mothers of relatively high educational level consumed fruits and vegetables more frequently than their peers of low socio-economic status. The latter group of children had a higher intake of fruit juices and/or soft drinks and had higher screen time. Parental rules and home availability were consistently different between the two socio-economic groups in our study in all countries. However we did not find a common pattern for all behaviours and the variability across the countries was large. Conclusions: Our findings are indicative of socio-economic inequalities in our samples, although the variability across the countries was large. The effectiveness of interventions aimed at chancing parental rules and behaviour on health inequalities should be studied