Assessing the contribution of working conditions to socioeconomic disparities in health: a commentary.
BACKGROUND
Occupational health researchers can play a pivotal role in increasing our understanding of the role of physical and psychosocial working conditions in producing socioeconomic health disparities and trends of increasing socioeconomic health disparities, contributing to interventions to reduce such disparities, and helping to improve public education materials on this subject. However, a number of methodological challenges in this field need to be considered.


METHODS
Commentary, including a review of selected studies.


CONCLUSIONS
Research needs to be guided by models of the associations between social (socioeconomic position (SEP), race/ethnicity, immigration status, and gender) and occupational variables and health, to avoid inappropriate control for confounding, and to specify causal pathways (mediation) and interaction effects. Different approaches to the theory and measurement of SEP also need to be tested.
Landsbergis
Paul A
PA
Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, State University of New York-Downstate School of Public Health, Brooklyn, New York 111203, USA. paul.landsbergis@downstate.edu
D000062:Accidents, Occupational; D017677:Age Distribution; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D054625:Healthcare Disparities / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D016272:Occupational Health; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors