In an original interview, Michael Marmot discusses how he got into public health issues, then addresses a wide range of issues, from the healthy immigrant effect to social gradients in smoking to why the patek philippe replica wealthy should care about health inequities... and what we can do about them.

This piece focuses on evidence linking socio-economic status (SES) to “downstream” peripheral biology. Drawing on the concept of allostatic load, the authors examine evidence linking lower SES with greater cumulative physiological toll on multiple major biological regulatory systems over the life course. They conclude with a discussion of the question of interactions between SES (and other such environmental factors) and genetic endowment, and their potential consequences for patterns of physiological activity—an area of research that appears poised to contribute significantly to our understanding of how social conditions “get under the skin” to affect health and aging.

This study studied cortisol levels throughout the day to determine if there is an association with socioeconomic status (SES) and race, considering whether the difference could be explained by health practices, emotional and social factors. The study found that lower SES was associated in a graded fashion with a weaker decline in cortisol levels during the evening, independent of race. Blacks also showed a smaller cortisol decline at the end of the day, independent of SES, and unexplained by other factors.

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Professor Sir Michael Marmot has been asked by the British government to Chair an independent Review to propose the most effective strategies for reducing health inequalities in England from 2010. This review is a response to the recommendation of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health that national governments develop and implement strategies and policies suited to their particular national context aimed at improving health equity.

In a study in the journal Economics and Human Biology, Oxford University researchers found that Americans and Britons are much more likely to be obese than Norwegians and Swedes, and suggested that the stress of life in a competitive social system without a strong welfare state may cause people to overeat.

Scientists such as Edith Chen, Ph.D, have found evidence that the very experience of poverty and the stress it induces might itself be an asthma “trigger.” Dr. Chen co-founded the Psychobiological Determinants of Health Lab at the University of British Columbia to better understand the pathways by which class gets under the skin and influences our heath.  Rather than focus on how material pollutants, like soot, disrupt our physiology Chen and her colleagues are investigating how ‘social pollutants’ – that is, toxic social environments can become embedded in our bodies and increase susceptibility to disease. 

How does socioeconomic status get under the skin? This book summarizes the decade of research by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health “exploring the pathways and mechanisms that contribute to the gradient relationship between socioeconomic status and health.”

PDFs of each article are available online.  You may also purchase a complete copy of the journal.

This report summarizes the research on childhood stress and its implications for adult health and well-being. Of particular interest is the stress caused by child abuse, neglect, and repeated exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV). This publication provides violence prevention practitioners with ideas about how to incorporate information on childhood stress into their work.

The focus of this chapter will be an examination of the relationship between traumatic stress in childhood and the leading causes of morbidity, mortality, and disability in the United States: cardiovascular disease, chronic lung disease, chronic liver disease, depression and other forms of mental illness, obesity, smoking, and alcohol and drug abuse.  To do this, the authors will draw on their experience with the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, a major American epidemiological study providing retrospective and prospective analysis in over 17,000 individuals of the effect of traumatic experiences during the first eighteen years of life on adolescent and adult medical and psychiatric disease, sexual behavior, healthcare costs, and life expectancy.4

In her keynote lecture to the 29th Annual Minority Health Conference, Dr. Krieger explores how racism harms health and creates the very categories of "race." The idea that racial/ethnic health inequities are a biological expression of racism, that their origins lie in injustice, not biology, is not an ideological argument but a scientific statement that rests on rigorous scientific testing. Using ecosocial theory, Krieger explains the myriad ways racial inequality becomes biologically embodied over the lifecourse and across generations, through pathways including adverse exposure to: economic and social deprivation; toxic substances, pathogens, and hazardous conditions; social trauma; targeted marketing of harmful commodities; and inadequate and degrading medical care. In this presentation, Krieger discusses conceptual and methodological aspects of analyzing how racial and economic injustice produce health inequities, coupled with empirical examples drawn from her own research as a social epidemiologist.

In Bayview-Hunters Point, the stress created by environmental problems, racism, poverty and crime may explain why so many babies die young. Infant mortality is twice as high here as in the rest of San Francisco.

Argues that "weathering" framework best describes complexities of inequality. Explains how this model suggests that African-American women experience early health deterioration  as a consequence of the cumulative impact of repeater experience with social, economic, or political exclusion. This includes the physical cost of engaging actively to address structural barriers to achievement and well-being.

In a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers report that repeated job losses may be as damaging to the heart health as smoking, high blood pressure, or diabetes. Among Americans aged 50 to 75, the unemployed suffer heart attacks at a rate that is 35% higher than that among employed people with otherwise similar risk factors, and the rate seems to rise with every new period of unemployment.

Even as the U.S. Labor Department released figures showing that the economy lost more than half a million jobs in April, researchers made public a large study with an unsettling finding: Losing your job may make you sick.

Researchers at University College London analyzed responses from a few thousand senior civil servants working for the British government in London, gathered over 11 years. The findings indicate that a nagging sense of being unfairly treated at work or at home can raise a person's risk of heart attack. The study was published in the British Medical Journal.

Neonatologists James Collins and Richard David specialize in the care of infants born too soon or too small. Their research on differences in birth outcomes between African American and white American women points to a provocative idea: the cumulative stress of racism is taking a toll on African American families even before they are born.

According to a new study in Molecular Psychiatry, violence leaves long-term scars on children's bodies, altering their DNA and causing changes that are equivalent to seven to 10 years of premature aging. Scientists measured this cellular aging by studying the ends of children's chromosomes, called telomeres.

The Tohono O'odham and Pima Indians of southern Arizona have perhaps the highest rate of diabetes in the world. Yet the disease was replica uhren virtually unknown here 100 years ago. Over the last century, the diversion of river water to upstream white settlements cost the O'odham their crops,  livelihood, traditional diet, culture and health. Today, community advocates hope that restoring water and renewing culture can help improve health.

Research increasingly suggests that it’s actually people lower down on the social scale — not those in leadership positions at the top — who suffer the worst health effects of stress. Now a new study of military officials and government richard mille replica staffers at a Harvard executive-training program confirms these findings, showing that as people climb the organizational rungs, their stress hormone levels and anxiety typically go down.

Series Creator and Executive Producer Larry Adelman expands upon economist Robert Evan's analogy of health care as a repair shop to illustrate the crucial role that "road conditions" play in determining our health status.

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This link is to a brief overview at brainconnection.com of a Sapolsky lecture based on his book of the same name. The book's title stems from Sapolsky's thesis that animals in the wild are less likely suffer from the chronic stress that contributes to a variety of human maladies. Sapolsky focuses on the effects of stress hormones on the human body. Praised as "One of the best science writers of our time," by Oliver Sacks, Sapolsky offers witty footnotes and several anecdotes which make the reading that much more interesting. While most of the book focuses on the biological machinery of the body, the last chapter of the book addresses self help.replicas de relojes suizos

Learn more about YES! - the after-school youth anti-violence program featured in "Place Matters."