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PLoS Medicine Issue Image | Vol. 7(8) August 2010
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Social Relationships: Key to Health and Health Policy. Top
The Editorial this month argues for the need to fundamentally rethink how societies can look beyond the "medical" causes of disease in an effort to promote health and well-being. This follows a systematic review and a meta-analysis by Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues published in PLoS Medicine in July finding that individuals' social relationships have as much influence on mortality risk as other well-established risk factors for mortality, such as smoking. Such a level of risk deserves attention at the highest possible level in determination of health policy, says the Editorial. Despite the fact that many governments have decided to cut to public spending drastically in order to reduce deficits, findings such as those by Holt-Lunstad and colleagues offer an opportunity to reorganize services to meet the needs of an increasingly complex society.
Image Credit: Shahram Sharif
Citation: (2010) PLoS Medicine Issue Image | Vol. 7(8) August 2010. PLoS Med 7(8): ev07.i08. doi:10.1371/image.pmed.v07.i08
Published: August 31, 2010
Copyright: © 2010 Shahram Sharif. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Social Relationships: Key to Health and Health Policy.
The Editorial this month argues for the need to fundamentally rethink how societies can look beyond the "medical" causes of disease in an effort to promote health and well-being. This follows a systematic review and a meta-analysis by Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues published in PLoS Medicine in July finding that individuals' social relationships have as much influence on mortality risk as other well-established risk factors for mortality, such as smoking. Such a level of risk deserves attention at the highest possible level in determination of health policy, says the Editorial. Despite the fact that many governments have decided to cut to public spending drastically in order to reduce deficits, findings such as those by Holt-Lunstad and colleagues offer an opportunity to reorganize services to meet the needs of an increasingly complex society.
Image Credit: Shahram Sharif
doi:10.1371/image.pmed.v07.i08.g001
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