Guest Editorial: Linking public health and personal health

Abstract

When considering health inequalities, it is essential to consider the social causes, context, and consequences of the inequalities (that is, the big picture) as well as the meanings and manifestations of the inequalities in the lives of individuals (that is, the fine grain). Or, to adopt Charles Wright Mills’s terminology in The Sociological Imagination, it is essential to be able to distinguish (and to understand) the ineluctable links between ‘the public issues of social structure’ and ‘the personal troubles of milieu’.