School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
BMC Public Health. 2012 Mar 8;12:171. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-12-171.
In the last decades we have accumulated substantial knowledge about the risk factors that lead to cardiovascular disease. Despite this progress, in this issue of BMC Public Health we learn that little improvement has been made towards reducing inequalities in these risk factors in the UK. Characterizing changes over time can help understanding the mechanisms that underpin health inequalities. These pathways are complex and operate at different levels, from the individual to the context where someone lives. In this commentary I highlight some of the issues and uncertainties that may arise when individual and area level measures are used indistinctively.
在过去的几十年里，我们已经积累了大量关于导致心血管疾病的危险因素的知识。尽管取得了这一进展，但在本期《BMC 公共卫生》中，我们了解到，在减少英国这些危险因素方面的不平等方面几乎没有取得任何进展。描述随时间的变化可以帮助我们理解造成健康不平等的机制。这些途径很复杂，在不同层面上运作，从个人到个人生活的环境。在这篇评论中，我强调了当个体和地区水平的措施被不加区分地使用时可能出现的一些问题和不确定性。
