Social epidemiology—strategies for public health activism

Put mildly, improving physical activity in children in times where schools are forced to cut their budget for qualified physical education teachers, where parents bring children to school by car as streets are too dangerous to cycle and the internet is easily accessible at home, is a daunting task. Ignoring such circumstances may explain to some extent the predominantly poor results of health education interventions aimed at increasing children’s physical activity. The need to understand health and health-related behaviour in a social and cultural context of everyday life is acknowledged in social epidemiology, a branch of epidemiology in which multilayered conceptual models and innovative methods …