FRHD 3090 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Homicide, Saturated Fat, C-Reactive Protein

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Family Relations and Human Development
• Course: FRHD 3090
• Professor: Michelle Preyde

Document Summary

British statistics have shown, for as long as one has cared to look, that health follows a social gradient: the higher the social position, the better the health. First, in rich countries, most diseases affect people of lower position more than those of higher. In this sense, the diseases of affluence are few: breast cancer has been a notable exception to the pattern of low social position, high risk. Second, it is not only the poor who suffer: e. g. Whitehall studies showed that civil servants who are not poor, the lower the employment grade, the higher the risk of most causes of death. The social gradient in health is not confined to those in poverty. Runs from top to bottom of society, with less goo standards of health at every step down the social hierarchy. Even comfortably off people somewhere in the middle tend to have poorer health than those above them.