Introduction to the special issue collection, How and why are health inequalities changing over time?

Victoria Tan; Arjumand Siddiqi; Falan Bennett; Mabel Carabali

doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2025.101823

Introduction to the special issue collection, How and why are health inequalities changing over time?

SSM Popul Health. 2025 May 29:31:101823. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2025.101823. eCollection 2025 Sep.

Authors

Victoria Tan¹, Arjumand Siddiqi^{2

3

4

5}, Falan Bennett^{2

6

7}, Mabel Carabali^{8

9}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
² Division of Epidemiology, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
³ Edwin S.H. Leong Centre for Healthy Children, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada.
⁴ Department of Social and Behavioral Health Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA.
⁵ Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
⁶ Child Health Evaluative Sciences, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁷ Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁸ Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, & Occupational Health, School of Population and Global Health, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, Canada.
⁹ CReSP, Centre de Recherche en Santé Publique, Direction régionale de santé publique, CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l'Île-de-Montréal, Montréal, Quebec, Canada.

Abstract

•Health inequalities remain persistent and durable, yet how and why they change over time is less known and examined.•This Special Issue brings together 16 studies examining trends in health inequalities across 20+ countries, including many outside the Global North.•While overall health outcomes improved over time in many studies, inequalities often persisted.•As such, concerted efforts are required to reduce health inequalities specifically, by addressing inequalities in the underlying macrosocial drivers of health.

Publication types

Editorial