Social epidemiology applies to the disciplinary approach of epidemiology examining and understanding the contributions of social conditions and processes to the unequal patterns of health and ill health in populations. Socioeconomic inequalities in health are a major challenge for health policy. Monitoring the changes in the magnitude of these inequalities is essential to assess the effectiveness of health policy interventions. There is a wide variety of summary measures for the magnitude of socioeconomic inequalities in health. These measures choose different perspectives, and it is recommended to assess the magnitude of health inequalities based on a set of diverse measures that together cover all the relevant perspectives. Both simple and sophisticated summary measures are presented in the course for each of these perspectives.
