Health research

Changing focal areas and expanding scope

Health inequalities, driven by the social determinants of health, are also a growing area of concern in public health. A central challenge to securing health equity is that the same social structures that contribute to health inequities also operate and are reproduced by public health organizations. In other words, public health organizations have evolved to better meet the needs of some groups more than others. The result is often that those most in need of preventative interventions are least likely to receive them and interventions can actually aggravate inequities as they are often inadvertently tailored to the needs of the normative group. Identifying bias within public health research and practice is essential to ensuring public health efforts mitigate and don't aggravate health inequities.