Citation

Lu TH, Chiang TL, Lynch JW. Inj. Prev. 2005; 11(3): 131-133.

Affiliation

Institute of Health Policy and Management, School of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, BMJ Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1136/ip.2005.008631

PMID

15933401

PMCID

PMC1730232

Abstract

In contrast with the plethora of studies concerning the social inequalities in health that have been conducted since the 1980s, there are relatively few related to injuries. There are even fewer studies comparing the influence of these inequalities in different countries. So, the publication of Borrell et alâ??s study on social inequalities in transportation injury mortality across European countries is most welcome and timely. Their study elucidated the effect of differing national contexts on the influence of social disparities on road traffic injury (RTI) mortality. In this commentary, we will first explain what a so-called "contextual effect" is and then illustrate that many such effects can be discovered only through international comparisons. We contend that "dissimilarities" may provide more useful information than "similarities".