ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the authors introduce and link together a selection of studies that either report or bear upon various aspects of the relationship between status and health. This linkage permits to extract and focus upon a series of propositions that, taken together, constitute at least the beginnings of a much more complex and comprehensive, yet coherent, understanding of the determinants of health. The authors provide a thread through what is a vast labyrinth of particular findings. They consider how a true health policy based on an understanding of the relative importance of the various determinants of health might differ from the health care policies that predominate. A common response is that public health measures, rather than medical therapy, were decisive. Relative to that simplistic view, the observations outlined above are "anomalous findings" on the determinants of health.