Lillie-Blanton M, Laveist T
Department of Health Policy and Management, School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 1996 Jul;43(1):83-91. doi: 10.1016/0277-9536(95)00337-1.
International and national research has documented the relations between socio-economic conditions and health. Nonetheless, racial/ethnic group comparisons of health indices frequently are presented in the United States without stratifying or adjusting for socio-economic conditions that could affect interpretation of the data. This paper examines how racial/ethnic group identifiers have been used in past research. While some studies assume biologic differences; others presume that race/ethnicity is a proxy for socio-economic race factors. One consequence of these presumptions has been an underdevelopment of knowledge about racial/ethnic minority populations that could help shape public policies and preventive interventions to reduce disparities in health. Findings from studies that examine the influence of both race and social class on health are reviewed in an effort to clarify the state-of-knowledge. Although the findings vary for particular health indices, the studies provide considerable evidence that socio-economic conditions are a powerful, although not necessarily exclusive, explanatory variable for racial disparities in health. The findings are used as the basis for encouraging more theoretically grounded and methodologically rigorous research rather than avoiding an assessment of the influence of race/ethnicity on health.
国际和国内的研究已经记录了社会经济状况与健康之间的关系。尽管如此，在美国，健康指数的种族/族裔群体比较经常在没有对可能影响数据解释的社会经济状况进行分层或调整的情况下呈现。本文考察了种族/族裔群体标识符在过去研究中的使用方式。一些研究假定存在生物学差异；另一些研究则假定种族/族裔是社会经济种族因素的替代指标。这些假定的一个后果是，关于种族/族裔少数群体的知识发展不足，而这些知识有助于制定公共政策和预防性干预措施，以减少健康差距。本文回顾了研究种族和社会阶层对健康影响的研究结果，以澄清知识现状。尽管特定健康指数的研究结果各不相同，但这些研究提供了大量证据表明，社会经济状况是健康方面种族差异的一个强大（尽管不一定是唯一的）解释变量。这些研究结果被用作鼓励开展更具理论基础和方法严谨性的研究的依据，而不是回避对种族/族裔对健康影响的评估。
