ABSTRACT
Social epidemiology is part of the general science of epidemiology and also a subfield of medical sociology, which focuses on the social distribution of health and disease and their social causes. Sociologists are typically concerned with the effects of specific variables or social characteristics within a population, such as age, sex, race, occupation, or any other measure of significant social differences. The term social environment in epidemiological research refers to living conditions, such as poverty or crowding, and also to the norms, values, and attitudes that reflect a particular social and cultural context of living. The social environment is considered key to understanding the risk of obesity because of differences in socioeconomic status, racial/ethnic cultural practices, lifestyles, and access to healthy living conditions. Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, however, can take on the attributes of a master status in that it becomes the single most important social characteristic of an infected person.
