ReviewInternational journal of environmental research and public health2020
Health Inequality as a Large-Scale Outcome of Complex Social Systems: Lessons for Action on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Review in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Forgotten: Child Mortality Among Indigenous Peoples of the Peruvian Amazon. Evidence from the 2017 Census.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2026Article
- Agency, place, and the real-world dynamics of health inequality.SSM - population health · 2026Article
- Evaluating the perceived outcome and impact of an integrated knowledge translation approach in the development of an equity reporting guideline: A cross-sectional survey.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Demographic and social determinants of mortality in cerebral arteriovenous malformations: identifying high-risk clusters in the U.S.Neurosurgical review · 2025Article
- Women's Empowerment and Health: A Narrative Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Review
- Thinking about inequalities in physical activity as an emergent feature of complex systems.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2024Article
- Collective action is needed to build a more just science system.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
- Mixed progress in adolescent health and wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand 2001-2019: a population overview from the Youth2000 survey series.Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2022Article
- Women, Patriarchy and Health Inequalities: The Urgent Need to Reorient Our Systems.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Action on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) needs to become real and impactful, taking a "whole systems" perspective on levers for systems change. This article reviews what we have learned over the past century about the large-scale outcome of health inequality, and what we know about the behaviour of complex social systems. This combined knowledge provides lessons on the nature of inequality and what effective action on our big goals, like the SDGs, might look like. It argues that economic theories and positivist social theories which have dominated the last 150 years have largely excluded the nature of human connections to each other, and the environment. This exclusion of intimacy has legitimatised arguments that only value-free economic processes matter for macro human systems, and only abstract measurement constitutes valuable social science. Theories of complex systems provide an alternative perspective. One where health inequality is viewed as emergent, and causes are systemic and compounding. Action therefore needs to be intensely local, with power relationships key to transformation. This requires conscious and difficult intervention on the intolerable accumulation of resources; improved reciprocity between social groups; and reversal of system flows, which at present ebb away from the local and those already disadvantaged.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.