Tackling early socioeconomic inequalities as important as encouraging smoking cessation

Although health behaviours such as smoking are directly linked to the majority of early deaths in the UK, tackling these individual factors fails to address the underlying cause. To get to the root of the problem, childhood deprivation must be addressed because it promotes damaging health behaviours in adult life. So say researchers from UCL in a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health . The study aimed to quantify the effects of early life circumstances on people's propensity to smoke, and the link between lower social status and increased risk of early death. Professor Eric Brunner (UCL Department of Epidemiology and Public Health), senior author of the research, says: "We set out to understand whether the risk of early death is passed from one generation to the next by social and economic disadvantage. Our research, based on a cohort of babies born in 1946, shows that inequalities in childhood and early adult life directly impact on social inequalities in mortality in later life. Early life circumstances clearly have a huge effect on the health behaviours people exhibit into adulthood.