"[1] This research includes "both specific features of, and pathways by which, societal conditions affect health".
Analyses that address the independent or synergistic effects of individual or contextual risk factors are often of interest.
[citation needed] Major research challenges in social epidemiology include tools to strengthen causal inference,[5][6] methods to test theoretical frameworks such as Fundamental Cause Theory,[7] translation of evidence to systems and policy changes that will improve population health,[8] and mostly obscure causal mechanisms between exposures and outcomes.
[citation needed] More recently, the discipline is moving from identifying health inequalities along the social gradient to identifying the policies, programmes and interventions that effectively tackle the observed socioeconomic inequalities in health.
Researchers Frank Pega and Ichiro Kawachi from Harvard University have suggested that this may lead to the new discipline of Political Epidemiology, which is more policy-applied in that it identifies effective and cost-effective social interventions for government action to improve health equity.