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. 2022 Nov;50(7):835-842.
doi: 10.1177/14034948221079061. Epub 2022 Mar 29.

The emergence of international comparisons of health inequalities as reflected in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health during its five decades

Eero Lahelma  1 , Ossi Rahkonen  1
Affiliations

The emergence of international comparisons of health inequalities as reflected in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health during its five decades

Eero Lahelma et al. Scand J Public Health. 2022 Nov.

Abstract

Aims: We examined the development of research articles published in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health and its predecessors Acta Socio-Medica Scandinavica and the Scandinavian Journal of Social Medicine from 1969 until 2020 to be able to identify the place of international comparisons of socioeconomic inequalities in health in the journal.

Methods: Altogether 3237 research articles were screened to yield 126 comparative research articles. Examining full texts of the comparative articles led to 13 articles reporting comparisons of health inequalities.

Results: The first one came out in 1972, but the rest only after the mid-1990s. The most common socioeconomic indicator was education, but also occupational class and income was used. The most common health indicator was self-rated health. The articles compared Nordic countries with each other, but also with non-Nordic countries. Although the number of comparative studies on health inequalities was relatively small, there were examples of well-designed studies using advanced methodology. We examined only published journal articles over the past five decades, not submitted but rejected papers.

Conclusions: In the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health and its predecessors, comparisons of health inequalities were few and emerged relatively late, that is, during the past two decades.

Keywords: Comparative studies; health inequality; review; socioeconomic.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Flowchart of inclusion of research articles published in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health and its predecessors in 1969–2020.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Annual number and polynomial trend of all research articles published in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health and its predecessors in 1969–2020 (N=3237).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Annual number and polynomial trend of articles reporting international comparisons (N=126).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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