Social epidemiology and health economics: The need to find common grounds.

There is an ever increasing number of studies focusing on health inequalities, expanding also into areas such as life course analyses and regional inequalities. By describing these inequalities in much detail, they continuously add to our understanding of the underlying causes, such as exposures during childhood and obesogenic environment. Today, it is widely acknowledged that more research is needed with a focus on interventions that could help to reduce health inequalities, and that a closer cooperation is needed between public health researchers and policy makers. It is less often pointed out that closer cooperation also is needed between social epidemiologists and health economists. Policy makers need to answer tough questions: How effective are interventions aimed at reducing health inequalities, and how much do they cost? What are the most cost-effective strategies, and how do they compare with the cost-effectiveness of other public health programs? How could we compare the ‘benefit’ between interventions that target health inequalities and other interventions that are directed towards improving health in the total population? These questions are rarely addressed in public health research