A recent study highlights the urgency of addressing social inequalities in health. It documents that declines in overall cancer mortality between 1993 and 2001 mainly reflects declines among the highly educated.177 For example, for lung cancer – the leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. – for both blacks and whites, men and women, each higher education level experienced a progressively steeper decline. The persistence and magnitude of social inequalities in health requires renewed attention to identifying the modifiable environmental factors in the places where individuals and groups live, learn, work, play and worship that can be manipulated to reduce social disparities in health.
