The author is attempting to get readers to realize the importance of social determinants of health. As public health is a relatively young field, it contains many new concepts including the biopsychosocial model of health. This model is illustrated as the author describes social epidemiology in contrast to the “vertical” or biomedical model of health.
What is Surprising?
It was surprising to me that the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Commission on the Social Determinants of Health (CSDH) report was not published until 2008. The birth of epidemiology far proceeded this concept, during its first revolution in which sanitation was implemented as a means of fighting common infections. As such, it is shocking that it