Theories for social epidemiology in the 21st century: an ecosocial perspective
TLDR
This paper argues that the central question becomes: who and what is responsible for population patterns of health, disease, and well-being, as manifested in present, past and changing social inequalities in health?Abstract:
In social epidemiology, to speak of theory is simultaneously to speak of society and biology. It is, I will argue, to speak of embodiment. At issue is how we literally incorporate, biologically, the world around us, a world in which we simultaneously are but one biological species among many—and one whose labour and ideas literally have transformed the face of this earth. To conceptualize and elucidate the myriad social and biological processes resulting in embodiment and its manifestation in populations' epidemiological profiles, we need theory. This is because theory helps us structure our ideas, so as to explain causal connections between specified phenomena within and across specified domains by using interrelated sets of ideas whose plausibility can be tested by human action and thought.1–3 Grappling with notions of causation, in turn, raises not only complex philosophical issues but also, in the case of social epidemiology, issues of accountability and agency: simply invoking abstract notions of ‘society’ and disembodied ‘genes’ will not suffice. Instead, the central question becomes: who and what is responsible for population patterns of health, disease, and well-being, as manifested in present, past and changing social inequalities in health?read more
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Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: conceptual issues and research evidence
TL;DR: It is shown that LGBs have a higher prevalence of mental disorders than heterosexuals and a conceptual framework is offered for understanding this excess in prevalence of disorder in terms of minority stress--explaining that stigma, prejudice, and discrimination create a hostile and stressful social environment that causes mental health problems.
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A life course approach to chronic disease epidemiology: conceptual models, empirical challenges and interdisciplinary perspectives
Yoav Ben-Shlomo,Diana Kuh +1 more
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A life course approach to chronic disease epidemiology
Diana Kuh,Yoav Ben-Shlomo +1 more
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Socioeconomic status in health research: one size does not fit all.
Paula Braveman,Catherine Cubbin,Susan Egerter,Sekai Chideya,Kristen S. Marchi,Marilyn Metzler,Samuel F. Posner +6 more
TL;DR: Evidence shows that conclusions about nonsocioeconomic causes of racial/ethnic differences in health may depend on the measure-eg, income, wealth, education, occupation, neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics, or past socioeconomic experiences used to "control for SES," suggesting that findings from studies that have measured limited aspects of SES should be reassessed.
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Experiences of discrimination: Validity and reliability of a self-report measure for population health research on racism and health
TL;DR: The results underscore the need for using validated, multi-item measures of experiences of racial discrimination and suggest the EOD may be one such measure that can be validly employed with working class African Americans and Latino Americans.
References
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Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology
TL;DR: Social capital has a definite place in sociological theory as mentioned in this paper, and its role in social control, in family support, and in benefits mediated by extra-familial networks, but excessive extensions of the concept may lead to excessive emphasis on positive consequences of sociability.
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TL;DR: A clutter tracking and cancelling system, for use in a MTI radar system, comprising an auxiliary channel consisting primarily of a phase detector and a canceller.
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Minority stress and mental health in gay men
TL;DR: The results supported minority stress hypotheses: each of the stressors had a significant independent association with a variety of mental health measures and odds ratios suggested that men who had high levels of minority stress were twice to three times as likely to suffer also from high level of distress.
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Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality
TL;DR: Unhealthy Societies as mentioned in this paper shows that social cohesion is crucial to the quality of life in the USA, Britain, Japan and Eastern Europe, and brings together evidence from the social and medical sciences.