This special issue of the Journal is devoted to understanding the many roads that lead toward achieving health equity. The eleven articles in the issue portray an America that is struggling with the clash between its historical ideal of pursuing equality for all and its ambivalence toward achieving equity in all social domains, especially health. Organized in five sections, the issue contains a...

The chemical policies of the 1970s were limited by the assumptions that lie at their foundation and focused narrowly on only the most hazardous chemicals. The effective management of chemicals requires policies that focus on the entire body of chemicals and the production systems that make them. The future will require comprehensive chemicals policies that work within a systems framework to pha...

Debates over national tobacco legislation and the use of state settlement funds demonstrate a need for information on the effects of tobacco control policies. Computer simulation models that are based on empirical evidence and that account for the variety of influences on tobacco use can be useful tools for informing policy makers. They can identify the effects of different policies, convey the...

When do lawmakers craft broad policies, and when do they focus on narrow legislation tailored to a local interest? We investigate this question by exploring historical variation in the types of bills produced by American state legislatures. Drawing on a new database of 165,000 bills— covering sessions over 120 years in thirteen different states—we demonstrate the surprising prominence of partic...

This article aims to discuss the concepts of Social Determination of Health and Social Determinants of Health, by establishing a comparison between each of their guiding perspectives and investigating their implications on the development of health policies and health actions. We propose a historical and conceptual reflection, highlighting the Theory on the Social Production of Health, followed...

We propose a general definition of “two-sided markets,” identify the conditions under which a market is indeed two-sided, and, finally, discuss why two-sidedness matters for business and public policies.

Link and Phelan (1995) developed the theory of fundamental causes to explain why the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and mortality has persisted despite radical changes in the diseases and risk factors that are presumed to explain it. They proposed that the enduring association results because SES embodies an array of resources, such as money, knowledge, prestige, power, and bene...

During the last twenty years, microsimulation models have been increasingly applied in qualitative and quantitative analysis of public policies. This paper provides a discussion on microsimulation techniques and their theoretical background as a tool for the analysis of public policies with particular attention to redistribution and social policies. Basic principles in using microsimulation mod...

While many health services strive to be equitable, accessible and inclusive, peoples' right to health often goes unrealized, particularly among vulnerable groups. The extent to which health policies explicitly seek to achieve such goals sets the policy context in which services are delivered and evaluated. An analytical framework was developed--EquiFrame--to evaluate 1) the extent to which 21 C...