The Whitehall Studies investigated social determinants of health, specifically the cardiovascular disease prevalence and mortality rates among British civil servants.
[3] The first Whitehall Study compared mortality of people in the highly stratified environment of the British Civil Service.
[citation needed] The initial Whitehall study found lower grades, and thus status, were clearly associated with higher prevalence of significant risk factors.
Controlling for these risk factors accounted for no more than forty percent of differences between civil service grades in cardiovascular disease mortality.
Whitehall I was carried out by the Department of Medical Statistics & Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and published in 1987.
[5] Twenty years later, the Whitehall II study[6] documented a similar gradient in morbidity in women as well as men.
As participants in this study continue through adult life, the research focuses on inequalities in health and functioning in an aging population.
With an increasingly large population of older citizens in the UK, there is an urgent need to identify the causes of social inequalities and to study the long-term effects of previous circumstances on people's ability to function and stay healthy during retirement.
The CSDH acted as a catalyst for change, working with countries, academics, and civil society to bring health inequalities to the fore in the national policy dialogue.
[citation needed] Subjects of Whitehall II in the lowest employment grades were more likely to have many of the established risk factors of coronary heart disease (CHD): a propensity to smoke, lower height-to-weight ratio, less leisure time, and higher blood pressure.
One theory explaining the connection between immune-efficiency and CHD is that infectious pathogens, such as herpes or Chlamydia, are at least partially responsible for coronary diseases.
In the Finnish study, "predictability" was defined as high stability of work and lack of unexpected changes, and was found to correlate closely to employment grade.
Those with fewer resources have a harder time making ends meet, a situation that can be a tremendous source of chronic anxiety.
The theory is based on a pathogenic contribution to coronary heart disease and the stressed body's inability to fight it.
By recognizing the effects of psychosocial stressors on the body, in addition to the traditional risk factors, physicians can offer a better assessment of a patient's health.
[18] Professor Sir Michael Marmot of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London initiated the Whitehall II study.