Decoding geographical health inequalities: a critical approach

During the last ten years, many studies dealing both with health and its inequalities, based on a geographical approach, have been carried out in the USA and in Europe. Generally this kind of approaches does not take into account population social specifications as they only deal with community criteria such as (the amount of) social and health equipments available or general average data on/concerning economic or health levels. The purpose of this study is to show – by means of a critical approach Land taking the French Nord-Pas-de-Calais area as an example – that health conditions differences observed in France between regions are essentially relying on the nature and weight of social health inequalities. The very poor health condition of the population there actually derives from much higher level of social health inequalities. The reasons for this very high inequality are still to be found.