Objective: To present the history of global health equity studies and provide reference for the selection of topics of China's health equity study.
Methods: In this article citations on the subject of health equity from Web of Science (WOS) were analyzed and 60 papers concerned which were cited more than 30 times selected. Through the co-citation cluster analysis combined with the content analysis of the highly-cited papers, this article attempted to cluster them into several significant categories. Then we analyzed their strategic importance in the field of health equity by drawing citation strategic diagrams.
Results: Six hot topics in health equity studies were as follows: health service equity, the relationship between health service demand and utilization; definitions of health equity; socioeconomic status and mortality, income distribution and health, and the measurement of health inequity. Income distribution and health was the biggest concern and the measurement of health inequity was of the greatest novelty.
Conclusion: Conducting empirical analyses on the effect of social determinants (including socioeconomic status, social network and psychosocial status etc.) on health by means of health equity measurements marks the development trend of health equity study.