IJE Advance Access originally published online on March 12, 2007
International Journal of Epidemiology 2007 36(2):265-268; doi:10.1093/ije/dym009
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2007; all rights reserved.
Editorial |
Epidemiology: a science for justice in health
IFC-National Research Council, via Trieste 41, 56126 PISA, Italy. E-mail saracci@hotmail.com
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The relationships between social environment and health, a time honoured topic of epidemiological research, have been the object of renewed interest particularly in the last 10–15 years. The scientific importance of socially relevant variables, namely those characterizing either a person as an agent in society (e.g. roles, such as sexual or professional, education, income) or a social institution (e.g. type of family, a health delivery service), emerges in several ways. First they are omnipresent as potential, and often actual, confounding factors to be measured and controlled when investigating the associations of other exposures with health outcomes. For instance the association, possibly causal, between levels of blood vitamin C and reduced mortality from several causes has been recently challenged on the grounds of uncontrolled confounding by socioeconomic factors.1–3 In general these factors tend to be underrated, namely left unmeasured or inadequately measured, not least because of the received (non)wisdom that for
Justice in health as a professional concern for epidemiologists
Justice in health as a guide to research and action
Justice in health within globalized capitalism