Commentary: Special Report: The Biology of Inequalities in Health: The Lifepath Consortium

摘要

In the health and social sciences, there is a general agreement that health is more than a biologicalphenomenon (1–3), yet the causal relationships between the social and the biological dimensionsof health have long remained elusive. This commentary aims at shedding light on how the projectLifepath has contributed to improving our understanding of such interactions between “the social”and “the biological.”. Lifepath is a research project funded by the European Commission Horizon2020 programme aimed at investigating the effects of socioeconomic inequalities on the biologyof healthy aging. Lifepath’s main research questions include how inequalities impact on health,what are the biological mechanisms underlying social differences in healthy aging, and whatpolicies can reduce social differences and promote healthy aging. When I worked as a visitingresearcher at the School of Public Health of Imperial College London, I had the opportunity todiscuss the assumptions and methods underlying this project with the Principal Investigator, PaoloVineis, and some Lifepath researchers, and to observe some processes by which they got to theirscientific findings.