1. D. Mechanic , “Rediscovering the Social Determinants of Health,”Health Affairs(May/June 2000 ): 269 –276
2. H. Gravelle , “Diminishing Returns to Aggregate Level Studies,”British Medical Journal319, no. 7215 ( 1999 ): 955 –956
3. Social Epidemiology and the Fundamental Cause Concept: On the Structuring of Effective Cancer Screens by Socioeconomic Status
4. Social Epidemiology and the Fundamental Cause Concept: On the Structuring of Effective Cancer Screens by Socioeconomic Status
5. Clearly, the growth in inequality ratios reflects the fact that blacks with much higher rates had a much greater distance to fall. This confusion pertains to many social policy issues, as discussed in J.P. Scanlan , “The Perils of Provocative Statistics,”Public Interest(Winter 1991 ): 3 –14. Scanlan notes that “the increase in ratios is simply what one would expect to accompany a general reduction in mortality from the disease, and it is where a disease has been almost entirely eliminated that the black-white ratio often will be the highest. When society sets about ordering its health-care priorities—and particularly when it orders them in hopes of reducing racial disparities in mortality from various diseases—a thoughtless emphasis upon increasing black-white mortality ratios could lead to grave error.”