A two-page handout that briefly describes ten key messages about health equity, as  presented in the PBS series UNNATURAL CAUSES, useful for spurring discussion and raising awareness.

In the United Kingdom, the 1998 Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health Report (otherwise known as the Acheson Report) concluded with 39 policy recommendations to improve health.

Two people, one rich and one poor, are told by their doctor to stop smoking and lose 30 pounds in six months. See the challenges they face as they try to follow their doctor’s orders.

How do racism and class status get under the skin? How simple is it to just "brush off" experiences with racism? Try this exercise to measure what you are able to take for granted (or not) in your life, and learn how these relate to health.

Contains a brief history of the national living wage movement, background materials such as ordinance summaries and comparisons, drafting tips, research summaries, talking points, and links to other living wage-related sites. (Please also visit for the latest on minimum wage ballot initiatives across the country.)

WHO's commitment to the promotion of equity and pro-poor policies in its disease prevention and control activities is based on the recognition of poverty as a major barrier to health and health care. In the case of tuberculosis (TB), the links between poverty and disease burden have been documented for many years. This document addresses the integration of national TB control programmes on the practical issues involved and options for action.

"Black Americans are failing to climb the social ladder, while a worrying number born into the middle classes are now actually poorer than their parents, according to a study released on Tuesday. The report by Brookings Institution scholar Julia Isaacs found blacks were missing out on a cherished American dream that their children will be economically better off...."

The American Human Development Project is a nonpartisan, non-profit initiative established to introduce to the United States a well-honed international approach and tool for measuring human well-being: the human development approach and the human development index. The project’s mission is to stimulate fact-based public debate about and political attention to human development issues in the United States and to empower people with an instrument to hold elected officials accountable for progress on issues we all care about: health, education and income.

In this original interview, Anthony Iton, director of the Alameda County Department of Public Health, talks about the extraordinary health of recent Latino immigrants and what we can all learn from them, the importance of hope, the power of community organizing, and why it's in all our best interest to tackle inequities sooner rather than later.

"APEN seeks to empower low-income Asian Pacific Islander (API) communities to achieve environmental and social justice. APEN believes that the environment includes everything around us: where we live, work and play. And we strive to build grassroots organizations that will improve the health, well-being and political strength of our communities."

The latest report in  United for a Fair Economy's State of the Dream series, "Austerity for Whom?," surveys the impacts of a tax-cutting, government-shrinking economic agenda – as prescribed by Republican leadership with Tea Party allies – on communities of color.

This document by California Newsreel provides an overview of how social concerns such as income, jobs, education, housing, and racism relate to health outcomes and inequities. The short pieces in this document are taken from the topic introductions in the Health Equity database on the UNNATURAL CAUSES Web site.

BARHII is a unique undertaking by local health departments in the San Francisco Bay Area to confront health inequities, and recently released a report, Health Inequities in the Bay Area (pdf). The regional collaboration includes public health directors, health officers, senior managers and staff from Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Solano counties, and the City of Berkeley. In addition to its work to help health departments learn from and teach each other, BARHII is developing regional strategies that supplement and support local work.

Kaiser Permanente's short video on health disparities presents some of the causes and costs of differences that result in poor health outcomes, and offers solutions to this nationwide problem. It includes more discussion of health care and insurance disparities than UNNATURAL CAUSES, but also mentions many of the social, environmental, and economic factors that generate health inequities.<br>
<br>Kaiser's Health Disparities site also includes other information and resources.

This brief offers a framework for strengthening communities to improve the health and well-being of residents. One of four publications that outline strategies for achieving better health through community-focused solutions, this report is based on a review of the literature as well as on interviews with African American and Latino community health leaders (or those serving African American and Latino populations) and elected officials from across the country.

The Bus Riders Union, a project of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, is a progressive civil rights and environmental justice membership organization. Its work begins with the mass transit and public health needs of the Black community, the multiple communities of the African Diaspora, Latinoamericanos, Asian/Pacific Islanders, Indigenous communities,and working class whites who are transit dependent in Los Angeles. The Bus Riders Union seeks to promote environmentally sustainable public transportation for the entire population of Los Angeles, on the premise that affordable, efficient, and environmentally sound mass transit is a human right.

This brief and polemical paper suggests that one crucial but under-investigated generator of health inequalities in Britain is the strategic decision-making of the wealthy and powerful. It is argued that the post-1970s dynamic between class and state which underpins this decision-making has been largely ignored by medical sociology in favour of repeated studies of the poor and powerless.

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The Center on the Developing Child was founded in 2006 on the belief that the vitality and sustainability of any society depend on the extent to which it equalizes opportunities early in life for all children to achieve their full potential and engage in responsible and productive citizenship. They view healthy child development as the foundation of economic prosperity and strong communities, and our mission is to advance that vision by leveraging science to enhance child well-being.

The site includes a list of the Center's excellent publications.

The Commission provides an in-depth collection of graphical data ready to download into relevant research and presentations on a range of issues from maternal education and infant mortality to income and life expectancy to placing the U.S. in a global context. Charts can be filtered by social factors or by health conditions.

Their State-by-State Data page allows for sorting charts by state and includes an Education and Health Calculator to compare your state to others.

This article discusses the evidence supporting the link between childhood and adolescent SES and adult health, and explores different environmental, behavioral, and physiological pathways that might explain how early SES would influence adult health.  THe authors also address the ages when SES exposures matter most for setting adult health trajectories as well as the role of exposure duration in SES influences on later health. While early childhood exposures seem to be potent predictors of a range of health outcomes, the authors emphasize that later childhood and adolescent exposures are risks for other health outcomes.

This report finds that across metropolitan America, black and Hispanic children face particularly severe challenges. Inequalities go far beyond what can be explained by income differences, as poor black and Hispanic children tend to encounter environments considerably worse than poor white and Asian children. Yet the very conditions that contribute to these inequalities suggest some possible policy solutions.

The analysis contained in this report is derived from diversitydata.org, a website using data from multiple sources to profile U.S. metropolitan areas's indicators on many dimensions of well-being, including housing, neighborhood conditions, residential integration, education and health.

A project of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH) supports countries and global health partners to address the social factors leading to ill health and inequities. It draws the attention of society to the social determinants of health that are known to be among the worst causes of poor health and inequalities between and within countries. The determinants include unemployment, unsafe workplaces, urban slums, globalization and lack of access to health systems. The Web site also contains final reports from the different knowledge networks, as well as additional background articles and resources.

A report published July 8 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that, while outcomes from the four leading cancers overall improved between 1993 and 2001, most of the decline in deaths occurred among men and women with college degrees. Among women with fewer than 12 years of education, only white women showed a signicant decline in mortality from breast cancer.

"According to economist and author Bernstein, the endless parade of economic legislation and corporate criminality that keep the rich getting richer are all a direct product of economic knowledge being monopolized and manipulated by the rich, keeping the middle and lower classes woefully unprepared to understand, much less stand up to, the economic forces aligned against them. Fortunately, this accessible overview should clear things up for even the most befogged reader.

Answering questions from an average American perspective-"the ones in the vise grip of the crunch"-Bernstein explains murky topics like health care reform, minimum wage laws, the Federal Reserve, immigration and budget deficits with a clear, friendly manner that sidesteps any scholarly (and/or sinister) obfuscation. His progressive "we're all in this together" philosophy, though seemingly familiar, is backed up with enough data and savvy to illuminate what's wrong in the dominant "self-reliance" narrative of American political discourse.

This down-to-earth, populist guide to the pressing economic issues of our time is a clarifying, useful and empowering resource." - Publishers Weekly

The directory contains an extensive list of existing data sets that can be used to address the need for improved conceptualization and availability of data on how the social environment impacts the health of populations. The data sets are organized according to 12 dimensions, or broad categories, of the social environment. Each dimension is subdivided into various components.

This directory grew out of a project based at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).