Social epidemiology

Abstract

Social epidemiology is the branch of epidemiology concerned with understanding how social and economic characteristics influence states of health in populations. There has been a resurgence recently in interest among epidemiologists about the roles that social and economic factors play in determining health, leading to valuable synergies with the social sciences. The determinants of health commonly studied in social epidemiology include absolute poverty, income inequality, as well as race and discrimination. Recently, social epidemiologists have been at the forefront of conceptual developments within the discipline that view the determinants of health at different levels of social organization. © 2008 Copyright © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved