Social and Economic Disparities in Health: Thoughts about Intervention

Abstract

It is now well established that inequalities in income lead to high morbidity and mortality rates. Certain explanations for this phenomenon are explored: (1) Instead of income inequalities causing disease, the inequalities are determined by powerful cultural forces. (2) The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. (2) Wealthier people can buy the means to protect their health. (4) Poorer people suffer not from poverty, but from relative deprivation. (5) Those with the weakest genes drift into the lower income groups. It is difficult to develop interventions directed to these possibilities. The concept of "control and destiny" is a possible explanation for the relation between inequalities and disease; unlike the other explanations, this idea is amenable to intervention.

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“…One point of critique is that Sudarshan Kriya, like several other New Age spiritual techniques, has a class bias. The high fees for the course in the context of a developing country like India make it a complicated case for spiritually inclined social work interventions, as technically social work interventions must have a pointed concern towards social class as a gradient and class inequalities (Syme 1998). This may also mean that practising the technique with the upper class and establishing its efficacy may not seamlessly translate into a testimonial for the technique's efficacy.…”

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“…Bridge sums up the sentiments in a range of documentation on the social antecedents of poor health outcomes in communities, [6][7][8] with a special focus on his work in Indigenous communities.…”

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