cancer – measurement, causes, mechanisms and interventions

This short note suggests a structure for the identification of theoretical and empirical questions in relation to the causes and mechanisms generating social inequalities in the burden of cancer. 1. The three approaches to measuring health inequalities. Danish health policy documents are still mixing up three different concepts and understandings of social inequalities in health (1): 1.1 The absolute health disadvantage among the poor and marginalized. 1.2 The health gap between these poor groups and the better off. 1.3 The health gradient across all socioeconomic groups in the population. These three approaches can be seen as placed on a continuum, where the basic mechanisms of differential exposure to important risk factors are similar in all three concepts (2). If however health disadvantages of the poor and marginalized primarily is a result of social consequences of illness rather than social causes the mechanisms generating this inequality are different from those generating the gradient. We will therefore in this note focus on the gradient, but include differential socia