Grant: Operating Grant - PA: Sodium and Health - Knowledge-to-action

The population strategy of prevention refers to prevention activities that target whole populations (i.e., areas, groups, jurisdictions, institutions, etc) regardless of variation in individual risk status. Recently, it has been suggested that the population strategy of prevention may inadvertently worsen socioeconomic inequities in health. We have argued that population prevention will not necessarily worsen socioeconomic inequities in health, and the likelihood of it doing so will depend on whether the intervention is more structural (targets conditions in which behaviours occur) or agentic (targets behaviours directly) in nature. Despite the enduring existence of and concern about socioeconomic inequities in health in Canada and worldwide, we currently know very little about the implications (equitable or not) of population interventions. The purpose of the proposed research is thus to examine the implications of population interventions (agentic and structural types) for socioeconomic inequities in health, focusing on dietary sodium as a case example.