The Social Determinants of Health: Looking Upstream

The new edition of this popular introduction takes seriously the idea that health outcomes can be fully understood only by investigating the role the social world plays in our health.

Ratcliff and Axtell-Thompson put into practice the "upstream" imagery championed by public health experts, locating the causes of health problems – and their solutions – within the social environment. Each chapter explains how the shape of social institutions, the unequal realities of community life, and the p...