JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association)

Health Equity: JAMA Internal Medicine Call for Papers https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2851086 Research on health differences by social class and economic status dates back to the mid-19th century. Early European publications examined differences in health by social class; then, during the next 100 years, the US produced the bulk of the evidence describing persistent and substantive differences in health across a broader range of social factors. During this descriptive period, scientists and clinicians came to realize that the differences noted in health care settings resulted from an array of structural, environmental, and social factors that spanned well beyond individual patients or the health care system. These broader factors are directly related to historical and current systemic inequities disadvantaging multiple population groups. The US is a fitting setting for this descriptive work, given its particularly stark social and economic inequities despite unparalleled national spending on research and health care. More recently, this research has evolved to explore underlying mechanisms of inequities and to test interventions to improve outcomes. This evolution has also marked a shift in nomenclature from health disparities (descriptive) to health equity (advancing health for all) research. However, despite progress during the last 75 years in the US, research in this field has continued to focus overwhelmingly on describing the number and scope of health inequities and defining the groups most adversely affected, at times relying heavily on conjectures about underlying etiology framed by the sociopolitical context.