Editorial Epidemiologic Study on Social Determinants of Health: What’s Next?

Copyright © 2015 Naoki Kondo. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Key words: health inequality; child; social determinants of health; policy In this issue, Kachi et al have reported novel evidence on health inequalities among young Japanese children and adolescents, showing that overweight is more prevalent among children who are socioeconomically disadvantaged in terms of parental income, expenditure, occupation, and education.1 The results are not surprising, as they are similar to data from other parts of the world, but the key message we should take from the results is that Japan—a country long considered an egalitarian society—is not an exception. In its final report, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Commission on Social Determinants of Health provided three essential policy recommendations.2 The first one concern