Social Dimensions of Cancer Incidence
The social dimensions of health and disease have received increased
attention over the past decade. This has coincided with a global and
rapid increase in the incidence of most types of cancer. Although a
number of studies have noted that the health of an area is strongly
related to social issues such levels of deprivation, poverty and unemployment,
the social dimensions of cancer have received little attention. Therefore,
a focus of interest for researchers here at Canterbury has been the
social dimensions of cancer patterns. Work has focused on the relationship
between lung cancer, urbanisation and deprivation in Scotland (Pearce,
2003; Pearce and Boyle, 2004a) as well as on lung cancer and residential
exposure to radon gas (Pearce and Boyle, 2004b). Current work is examining
the social dimensions of melanoma incidence in New Zealand (Pearce,
Barnett and Kingham, 2004) a country with the highest rate of the disease
in the world.