Publication
Title
Reconsidering inequalities in preventive health care: an application of cultural health capital theory and the life-course perspective to the take-up of mammography screening
Author
Abstract
While there are abundant descriptions of socioeconomic inequalities in preventive health care, knowledge about the true mechanisms is still lacking. Recently, the role of cultural health capital in preventive health-care inequalities has been discussed theoretically. Given substantial analogies, we explore how our understanding of cultural health capital and preventive health-care inequalities can be advanced by applying the theoretical principles and methodology of the life-course perspective. By means of event history analysis and retrospective data from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement, we examine the role of cultural capital and cultural health capital during childhood on the timely initiation of mammography screening in Belgium (N=1348). In line with cumulative disadvantage theory, the results show that childhood cultural conditions are independently associated with mammography screening, even after childhood and adulthood socioeconomic position and health are controlled for. Lingering effects from childhood are suggested by the accumulation of cultural health capital that starts early in life. Inequalities in the take-up of screening are manifested as a lower probability of ever having a mammogram, rather than in the late initiation of screening.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Sociology of health and illness. - London, 1979, currens
Publication
London : 2014
ISSN
0141-9889 [print]
1467-9566 [online]
DOI
10.1111/1467-9566.12169
Volume/pages
36 :8 (2014) , p. 1259-1275
ISI
000345916000009
Pubmed ID
25470325
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Project info
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 13.01.2015
Last edited 09.10.2023
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