Monitoring Health Inequalities in 12 European Countries: Lessons Learned from the Joint Action Health Equity Europe.

To raise awareness about health inequalities, a well-functioning health inequality monitoring system (HIMS) is crucial. Drawing on work conducted under the Joint Action Health Equity Europe, the aim of this paper is to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses in current health inequality monitoring based on lessons learned from 12 European countries and to discuss what can be done to strengthen their capacities. Fifty-five statements were used to collect information about the status of the capacities at different steps of the monitoring process. The results indicate that the preconditions for monitoring vary greatly between countries. The availability and quality of data are generally regarded as strong, as is the ability to disaggregate data by age and gender. Regarded as poorer is the ability to disaggregate data by socioeconomic factors, such as education and income, or by other measures of social position, such as ethnicity. Few countries have a proper health inequality monitoring strategy in place and, where in place, it is often regarded as poorly up to date with policymakers' needs. These findings suggest that non-data-related issues might be overlooked aspects of health inequality monitoring. Structures for stakeholder involvement and communication that attracts attention from policymakers are examples of aspects that deserve more effort.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health and health behaviors in Swedish adolescents.

AIMS: There is an urgent need to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent mental health and health behaviours. To date, there are no such studies on Swedish adolescents. As COVID-19 emerged in the middle of our ongoing 2-year follow-up examination of the Study of Adolescence Resilience and Stress, we had the unique opportunity to use the corona outbreak as a 'natural experiment' to study the impact of COVID-19 on 15-year-old adolescents in Sweden. METHODS: Adolescents (baseline age 13.6±0.4 years) were recruited from schools in western Sweden (during the COVID-19 outbreak schools were kept open for those under 16 years of age). The COVID-19 pandemic reached Sweden on 31 January 2020. A total of 1316 adolescents answered the 2-year follow-up survey before (unexposed to COVID-19 pandemic, controls) and 584 after 1 February 2020 (COVID19-exposed). Data on stress, psychosomatic symptoms, happiness, relationships with parents and peers, school and health behaviours were collected. RESULTS: Adolescents reported higher levels of stress and psychosomatic symptoms and lower levels of happiness at follow-up compared to baseline. These changes occurred to a similar extent in both the control and COVID-19-exposed groups. Likewise, the COVID-19-exposed group showed no deterioration in peer relations or relations with parents versus controls. We did not find any significant differences between groups regarding sleep duration and physical activity. Conclusions: Swedish adolescents exposed to COVID-19 during most of 2020 showed no differences in longitudinal changes in mental health, relationships with parents and peers, and health behaviours compared to those not exposed to COVID-19.

Associations between income inequality at municipality level and health depend on context - a multilevel analysis on myocardial infarction in Sweden.

This study investigates whether a) income inequality in Swedish municipalities increases the risk of myocardial infarction (AMI); b) the association between income inequality and AMI is mediated by level of residential segregation, measured as homogeneity in parishes (as a proxy for neighbourhoods) within municipalities; and c) there is an interaction between parish homogeneity and individual level social position. The study population consisted of all individuals aged 40-64 years in 1990 who lived in municipalities with >50,000 inhabitants (n = 1,284,955). Data on socioeconomic, demographic information and diagnosis data on AMI were obtained by linkage between authority-administered registers and the National Patient Register. All individuals were followed from 1991 onwards until the first relevant discharge, death or end of observation period (1998). We used a multilevel Poisson model where individuals were nested within 729 parishes which in turn were nested in 41 municipalities. We found that the risk for AMI was lower in the municipalities with higher degree of income inequality. Segregation of households in the highest income quintile diluted, but did not eliminate, the association between income inequality and risk of AMI - the degree of parish affluence seemed to be more important as a mediator than other parish characteristics, even when individual level characteristics were added to the model. Interaction analyses showed that the divide between manual workers and non-manual employees became more apparent in parishes with a higher degree of parish affluence. This was more apparent in municipalities with higher income inequality and was due to a decreasing risk among high level non-manual employees and an unchanged risk among manual workers. The results give some support to the idea that income inequality might serve as a proxy for social stratification even in a comparatively egalitarian context.

Are manual workers at higher risk of death than non-manual employees when living in Swedish municipalities with higher income inequality?

OBJECTIVES: To test the hypothesis that manual workers are at higher risk of death than are non-manual employees when living in municipalities with higher income inequality. DESIGN: Hierarchical regression was used for the analysis were individuals were nested within municipalities according to the 1990 Swedish census. The outcome was all-cause mortality 1992-1998. The income measure at the individual level was disposable family income weighted against composition of family; the income inequality measure used at the municipality level was the Gini coefficient. PARTICIPANTS: The study population consisted of 1 578 186 people aged 40-64 years in the 1990 Swedish census, who were being reported as unskilled or skilled manual workers, lower-, intermediate-, or high-level non-manual employees. RESULTS: There was no significant association between income inequality at the municipality level and risk of death, but an expected gradient with unskilled manual workers having the highest risk and high-level non-manual employees having the lowest. However, in the interaction models the relative risk (RR) of death for high-level non-manual employees was decreasing with increasing income inequality (RR = 0.77; 95% CI, 0.63-0.93), whereas the corresponding risk for unskilled manual workers increased with increasing income inequality (RR = 1.24; 95% CI, 1.06-1.46). The RRs for skilled manual, low- and medium- level non-manual employees were not significant. Controlling for income at the individual level did not substantially alter these findings, neither did potential confounders at the municipality level. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that there could be a differential impact from income inequality on risk of death, dependent on individuals' social position.

Income distribution and mortality: implications from a comparison of individual-level analysis and multilevel analysis with Swedish data.

BACKGROUND: This follow-up study analyses whether there is an association between income distribution in Swedish municipalities and risk of death from all causes in the total Swedish population aged 40-64 years and compares the results obtained with analyses performed on individual-level analysis and multilevel analysis. METHODS: Individual-level data on social and economic circumstances were obtained from various official records and were linked to the national cause-of-death register. Analyses were made with two methods, an individual-level regression and a multilevel regression. The study population comprised all people 40-64 years of age in the 1990 Swedish census, altogether 2.57 million people in 284 municipalities. RESULTS: The main results showed that in the individual-level regression the income distribution showed a positive and significant association (risk ratio = 1.29; 95% CI = 1.24-1.34) with higher mortality for those living in municipalities with higher income inequality. This association was not found in the multilevel regression analysis (RR = 1.03; 95%CI = 0.94-1.13). CONCLUSION: There seems to be no association between income distribution and mortality in Sweden when considering the possibility of clustering in municipalities. Further studies on the relationship between income inequality and health should aim at elucidate processes within area-level units.

Metropolitan income inequality and working-age mortality: a cross-sectional analysis using comparable data from five countries.

The relationship between income inequality and mortality has come into question as of late from many within-country studies. This article examines the relationship between income inequality and working-age mortality for metropolitan areas (MAs) in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, and the United States to provide a fuller understanding of national contexts that produce associations between inequality and mortality. An ecological cross-sectional analysis of income inequality (as measured by median share of income) and working-age (25-64) mortality by using census and vital statistics data for 528 MAs (population >50,000) from five countries in 1990-1991 was used. When data from all countries were pooled, there was a significant relationship between income inequality and mortality in the 528 MAs studied. A hypothetical increase in the share of income to the poorest half of households of 1% was associated with a decline in working-age mortality of over 21 deaths per 100,000. Within each country, however, a significant relationship between inequality and mortality was evident only for MAs in the United States and Great Britain. These two countries had the highest average levels of income inequality and the largest populations of the five countries studied. Although a strong ecological association was found between income inequality and mortality across the 528 MAs, an association between income inequality and mortality was evident only in within-country analyses for the two most unequal countries: the United States and Great Britain. The absence of an effect of metropolitan-scale income inequality on mortality in the more egalitarian countries of Canada, Australia, and Sweden is suggestive of national-scale policies in these countries that buffer hypothetical effects of income inequality as a determinant of population health in industrialized economies.