Although reducing health inequalities is an importantgoal in many countries, setting priorities for and de-veloping appropriate public health intervention pro-grams has been a challenge, at least in part because there are insufficient data as to which subpopulations are most in need of intervention....

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Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2006
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Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.659.6272
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1455422/pdf/20060509s00014p1415.pdf
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Summary:Although reducing health inequalities is an importantgoal in many countries, setting priorities for and de-veloping appropriate public health intervention pro-grams has been a challenge, at least in part because there are insufficient data as to which subpopulations are most in need of intervention.1,2 Population-based studies of the asso-ciation between socioeconomic disparities and birth out-comes can provide essential information for targeted public health programs. However, such efforts have been hampered by the paucity of data on socioeconomic status (SES) in most perinatal surveillance databases.3 For instance, US birth reg-istrations contain data on maternal education but not on in-come.3,4 Canadian birth registrations are even less informa-tive, with no data on income in any province, and data on maternal education only in Quebec and Newfoundland.5,6 Intervention programs that consider at-risk subpopulations from both individual and community perspectives may help to