Who benefits from antidepressants? US health inequities

In order to investigate changes in the magnitude of health inequities over time, Nancy Krieger (Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA) and colleagues studied two common measures of population health: rates of premature mortality (dying before the age of 65 years) and of infant mortality (death before the age of 1 year). They used death statistics data from different US counties, which are routinely collected by US states and submitted to the federal government. They studied these mortality rates for counties at different income levels, for the total US population, and for whites versus people of color.

The finding that socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequities in US premature mortality and infant death narrowed and then widened requires explanation, say Krieger and colleagues, "and refutes the view that improvements in population health by default entail growing or shrinking health disparities."

"Death is inevitable," say the authors, "but premature mortality is not."

Citation: Krieger N, Rehkopf DH, Chen JT, Waterman PD, Marcelli E, et al. (2008) The fall and rise of US inequities in premature mortality: 1960–2002. PLoS Med 5(2): e46.

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