RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Framework for understanding health inequalities over the life course: the embodiment dynamic and biological mechanisms of exogenous and endogenous origin
JF Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
JO J Epidemiol Community Health
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd
SP 1181
OP 1186
DO 10.1136/jech-2021-216430
VO 75
IS 12
A1 Kelly-Irving, Michelle
A1 Delpierre, Cyrille
YR 2021
UL http://jech.bmj.com/content/75/12/1181.abstract
AB Understanding how structural, social and psychosocial factors come to affect our health resulting in health inequalities is more relevant now than ever as trends in mortality gaps between rich and poor appear to have widened over the past decades. To move beyond description, we need to hypothesise about how structural and social factors may cause health outcomes. In this paper, we examine the construction of health over the life course through the lens of influential theoretical work. Based on concepts developed by scholars from different disciplines, we propose a novel framework for research on social-to-biological processes which may be important contributors to health inequalities. We define two broad sets of mechanisms that may help understand how socially structured exposures become embodied: mechanisms of exogenous and endogenous origin. We describe the embodiment dynamic framework, its uses and how it may be combined with an intersectional approach to examine how intermeshed oppressions affect social exposures which may be expressed biologically. We explain the usefulness of this framework as a tool for carrying out research and providing scientific evidence to challenge genetic essentialism, often used to dismiss social inequalities in health.Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study. No data are relevant to this paper.