Articles

Measuring inequality: tools and an illustration

This paper examines an aspect of the problem of measuring inequality in health services. The measures that are commonly applied can be misleading because such measures obscure the difficulty in obtaining a com...

Authors: Ruth FG Williams and DP Doessel

Variation in prescribing for anxiety and depression: a reflection of health inequalities, cultural differences or variations in access to care?

There are large variations in mental health prescribing in UK populations. However the underlying reasons for these differences, which may be related to differences in prevalence, cultural expectations or prac...

Authors: Elizabeth Goyder, Chris Dibben, Michael Grimsley, Jean Peters, Lindsay Blank and Elizabeth Ellis

Social capital and health: Does egalitarianism matter? A literature review

The aim of the paper is to critically review the notion of social capital and review empirical literature on the association between social capital and health across countries. The methodology used for the rev...

Authors: M Kamrul Islam, Juan Merlo, Ichiro Kawachi, Martin Lindström and Ulf-G Gerdtham

Incorporating concepts of inequality and inequity into health benefits analysis

Although environmental policy decisions are often based in part on both risk assessment information and environmental justice concerns, formalized approaches for addressing inequality or inequity when estimati...

Authors: Jonathan I Levy, Susan M Chemerynski and Jessica L Tuchmann

Social inequalities and health inequity in Morocco

According to the last census, Morocco has a population approaching 30 million people. The country has made good progress in the control of preventable childhood diseases but social inequalities and health ineq...

Authors: Abdesslam Boutayeb

Defining and measuring gender: A social determinant of health whose time has come

This paper contributes to a nascent scholarly discussion of sex and gender as determinants of health. Health is a composite of biological makeup and socioeconomic circumstances. Differences in health and illne...

Authors: Susan P Phillips

The appearance of discretionary income: Influence on the prevalence of under- and over-nutrition

Undernutrition – protein energy malnutrition or specific nutrient deficiencies – has been an inherent characteristic of impoverished populations throughout the world. Over-nutrition, obesity and nutrition imba...

Authors: Robert J Karp, Cindy Cheng and Alan F Meyers

Nepal's War on Human Rights: A summit higher than Everest

Nepal has witnessed serious human rights violations including arbitrary arrests, detentions, "disappearances", extra judicial executions, abductions and torture carried out by both the Royal Nepalese Army and ...

Authors: Sonal Singh, Khagendra Dahal and Edward Mills

Health information generation and utilization for informed decision-making in equitable health service management: The case of Kenya Partnership for Health program

The Kenya Partnership for Health (KPH) program began in 1999, and is currently one of the 12 field projects participating in the WHO's 'Towards Unity for Health initiative' implemented to develop partnership syne...

Authors: Nzioka M Solomon

Perceptions of substance use, treatment options and training needs among Iranian primary care physicians

In order to be optimally effective, continuing training programmes for health-care professionals need to be tailored so that they target specific knowledge deficits, both in terms of topic content and appropri...

Authors: Anthony Shakeshaft, Bijan Nassirimanesh, Carolyn Day and Kate A Dolan

User fees in private non-for-profit hospitals in Uganda: a survey and intervention for equity

In developing countries, user fees may represent an important source of revenues for private-non-for-profit hospitals, but they may also affect access, use and equity.

Authors: Joseph Amone, Salome Asio, Adriano Cattaneo, Annet Kakinda Kweyatulira, Anna Macaluso, Gavino Maciocco, Maurice Mukokoma, Luca Ronfani and Stefano Santini

What's in a virus? Folk understandings of hepatitis C infection and infectiousness among injecting drug users in Kings Cross, Sydney

To explore folk understandings of blood borne virus infection and infectiousness among injecting drug users in Kings Cross, Sydney.

Authors: Erica Southgate, Anne Maree Weatherall, Carolyn Day and Kate A Dolan

Strategies to prevent HIV transmission among heterosexual African-American women

African-American women are disproportionately affected by HIV, accounting for 60% of all cases among women in the United States. Although their race is not a precursor for HIV, the socioeconomic and cultural d...

Authors: E James Essien, Angela F Meshack, Ronald J Peters, GO Ogungbade and Nora I Osemene

Exploring the equity of GP practice prescribing rates for selected coronary heart disease drugs: a multiple regression analysis with proxies of healthcare need

There is a small, but growing body of literature highlighting inequities in GP practice prescribing rates for many drug therapies. The aim of this paper is to further explore the equity of prescribing for five...

Authors: Paul R Ward, Peter R Noyce and Antony S St Leger

The burden of non communicable diseases in developing countries

By the dawn of the third millennium, non communicable diseases are sweeping the entire globe, with an increasing trend in developing countries where, the transition imposes more constraints to deal with the do...

Authors: Abdesslam Boutayeb and Saber Boutayeb

The 1999 international emergency humanitarian evacuation of the Kosovars to Canada: A qualitative study of service providers' perspectives at the international, national and local levels

In response to the Kosovo crisis, Canada received 5,500 Albanian Kosovar refugees in 1999 as part of the emergency humanitarian evacuation and settlement effort. This study attempts to describe the experiences...

Authors: Nancy Fowler, Lynda Redwood-Campbell, Elizabeth Molinaro, Michelle Howard, Janusz Kaczorowski, Morteza Jafarpour and Susan Robinson

The effect of ethnicity on outcomes in a practice-based trial to improve cardiovascular disease prevention

Health disparities are a growing concern. Recently, we conducted a practice-based trial to help primary care physicians improve adherence with 21 quality indicators relevant to the primary and secondary preven...

Authors: Paul J Nietert, Steven M Ornstein, Ruth G Jenkins, Loraine F Roylance, Lori M Dickerson and Chris Feifer

The development of a strategy for tackling health inequalities in the Netherlands

Over the past decade, the Dutch government has pursued a research-based approach to tackle socioeconomic inequalities in health. We report on the most recent phase in this approach: the development of a strate...

Authors: Johan P Mackenbach and Karien Stronks

Musculo-skeletal pain among 40- and 45-year olds in Oslo: differences between two socioeconomically contrasting areas, and their possible explanations

The objective of the study was to compare the prevalence and severity of musculo-skeletal pain between two socioeconomically contrasting areas in Oslo, Norway, and to explore possible explanatory factors.

Authors: Mette Brekke and Per Hjortdahl

Mothers' education but not fathers' education, household assets or land ownership is the best predictor of child health inequalities in rural Uganda

Health and nutrition inequality is a result of a complex web of factors that include socio-economic inequalities. Various socio-economic indicators exist however some do not accurately predict inequalities in ...

Authors: Henry Wamani, Thorkild Tylleskär, Anne Nordrehaug Åstrøm, James K Tumwine and Stefan Peterson

Health and literacy in first- and second-generation Moroccan Berber women in the Netherlands: Ill literacy?

The present study was aimed at investigating the role of literacy and generation in the self-reported general health status of Moroccan Berber speaking women in the Netherlands.

Authors: Marrie HJ Bekker and Mina Lhajoui

HIV education in a Siberian prison colony for drug dependent males

To evaluate the effectiveness of an HIV peer training program conducted in a colony for drug dependent male prisoners in Siberia, Russia.

Authors: Kate A Dolan, Murdo Bijl and Bethany White

Socio-economic differences and health seeking behaviour for the diagnosis and treatment of malaria: a case study of four local government areas operating the Bamako initiative programme in south-east Nigeria

Malaria is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in Nigeria. It is not known how user fees introduced under the Bamako Initiative (BI) system affect healthcare seeking among different socio-econ...

Authors: Benjamin SC Uzochukwu and Obinna E Onwujekwe

Primary source of income is associated with differences in HIV risk behaviors in street-recruited samples

The relationship between primary source of income and HIV risk behaviors and the racial/ethnic differences in risk behavior profiles among disadvantaged populations have not been fully explored. This is unusua...

Authors: E James Essien, Michael W Ross, Mark L Williams, Angela F Meshack, Maria E Fernández-Esquer, Ronald J Peters and GO Ogungbade

Deteriorating health satisfaction among immigrants from Eastern Europe to Germany

Migrants from Eastern Europe constitute more than 5% of Germany's population. Since population health in their countries of origin is poor their health status upon arrival may be worse than that of the native-...

Authors: Ulrich Ronellenfitsch and Oliver Razum

The Oslo Health Study: The impact of self-selection in a large, population-based survey

Research on health equity which mainly utilises population-based surveys, may be hampered by serious selection bias due to a considerable number of invitees declining to participate. Sufficient information fro...

Authors: Anne Johanne Søgaard, Randi Selmer, Espen Bjertness and Dag Thelle

Residence, income and cancer hospitalizations in British Columbia during a decade of policy change

Through the 1990s, governments across Canada shifted health care funding allocation and organizational foci toward a community-based population health model. Major concerns of reform based on this model includ...

Authors: ME Brackley and MJ Penning

Self-help: What future role in health care for low and middle-income countries?

In the debate on 'Third options' for health care delivery in low- and middle-income countries it is proposed that self-help should play a larger role. Self-help is expected to contribute towards improving popu...

Authors: KR Nayar, Catherine Kyobutungi and Oliver Razum

Heterogeneity within the Asian American community

Educational interventions are grounded on scientific data and assumptions about the community to be served. While the Pan Asian community is composed of multiple, ethnic subgroups, it is often treated as a sin...

Authors: Georgia Robins Sadler, Lisa Ryujin, Tammy Nguyen, Gia Oh, Grace Paik and Brenda Kustin

Uses of population census data for monitoring geographical imbalance in the health workforce: snapshots from three developing countries

Imbalance in the distribution of human resources for health (HRH), eventually leading to inequities in health services delivery and population health outcomes, is an issue of social and political concern in ma...

Authors: Neeru Gupta, Pascal Zurn, Khassoum Diallo and Mario R Dal Poz

Gender in medicine – an issue for women only? A survey of physician teachers' gender attitudes

During the last decades research has disclosed gender differences and gender bias in different fields of academic and clinical medicine. Consequently, a gender perspective has been asked for in medical curricu...

Authors: Gunilla Risberg, Eva E Johansson, Göran Westman and Katarina Hamberg

Medical risks during flight deportation of refugees

Authors: Siroos Mirzaei, Rainer W Lipp, Margarida Rodrigues and Peter Knoll

Measuring health inequality among children in developing countries: does the choice of the indicator of economic status matter?

Currently, poor-rich inequalities in health in developing countries receive a lot of attention from both researchers and policy makers. Since measuring economic status in developing countries is often problema...

Authors: Tanja AJ Houweling, Anton E Kunst and Johan P Mackenbach

Inequities in under-five child malnutrition in South Africa

To assess and quantify the magnitude of inequalities in under-five child malnutrition, particularly those ascribable to socio-economic status and to consider the policy implications of these findings.

Authors: Eyob Zere and Diane McIntyre

Challenge of the world order and its implications for health personnel

Authors: Siroos Mirzaei and Peter Knoll

A step too far? Making health equity interventions in Namibia more sufficient

Equality of health status is the health equity goal being pursued in developed countries and advocated by development agencies such as WHO and The Rockefeller Foundation for developing countries also. Other co...

Authors: Anne Low, Taati Ithindi and Allan Low

Poverty and Inequity in the Era of Globalization: Our Need to Change and to Re-conceptualize

Authors: Claudio Schuftan

Gender and Power ... and perhaps Temperament?

Authors: John DiLiberti

Social inequalities in health- do they diminish with age? Revisiting the question in Sweden 1999

Individuals with low income have poorer health and should, therefore, have higher health expenditure than people with high income particularly in countries with a universal health care system. However, it has ...

Authors: Juan Merlo, Ulf-G Gerdtham, John Lynch, Anders Beckman, Anders Norlund and Thor Lithman

Gender and power: Nurses and doctors in Canada

The nurse-doctor relationship is historically one of female nurse deference to male physician authority. We investigated the effects of physicians' sex on female nurses' behaviour.

Authors: Barbara Zelek and Susan P Phillips

Measuring total health inequality: adding individual variation to group-level differences

Studies have revealed large variations in average health status across social, economic, and other groups. No study exists on the distribution of the risk of ill-health across individuals, either within groups or...

Authors: Emmanuela Gakidou and Gary King

A Problem with the Individual Approach in the WHO Health Inequality Measurement

In the World Health Report 2000, the World Health Organization made the controversial choice to measure inequality across individuals rather than across groups, the standard in the field. This choice has been wid...

Authors: Yukiko Asada and Thomas Hedemann

Annotated Bibliography on Equity in Health, 1980-2001

The purposes of this bibliography are to present an overview of the published literature on equity in health and to summarize key articles relevant to the mission of the International Society for Equity in Hea...

Authors: James A Macinko and Barbara Starfield