Pathways of disadvantage and smoking careers: evidence and policy implications.

Objectives: To investigate in older industrialised societies (a) how social disadvantage contributes to smoking risk among women (b) the role of social and economic policies in reducing disadvantage and moderating wider inequalities in life chances and living standards.

Methods: Review and analysis of (a) the effects of disadvantage in childhood and into adulthood on women's smoking status in early adulthood (b) policy impacts on the social exposures associated with high smoking risk.

Main Results: (a) Smoking status--ever smoking, current smoking, heavy smoking, and cessation--is influenced not only by current circumstances but by longer term biographies of disadvantage (b) social and economic policies shape key social predictors of women's smoking status, including childhood circumstances, educational levels and adult circumstances, and moderate inequalities in the distribution of these dimensions of life chances and living standards.

Socioeconomic gradients in smoking among young women: A British survey.

Marked and increasing socioeconomic gradients in cigarette smoking are well established. Tracking these differentials among women requires appropriate measures of their socioeconomic position (SEP) which are equivalent across older and younger age groups. This study examines socioeconomic gradients in cigarette smoking by age among women aged 20-34, using a standard indicator of SEP (age left full-time education) and alternative indicators which take account of changes in women's educational levels across age cohorts.

Socioeconomic lifecourse influences on women's smoking status in early adulthood.

Study Objective: To incorporate women's domestic trajectories and circumstances into analyses of the socioeconomic influences on women's smoking status (current and former smoking) in early adulthood.

Design: Cross sectional survey.

Setting: Southampton, UK.

Place of death: analysis of cancer deaths in part of North West England.

Background: Relatively little work of a detailed geographical nature has been undertaken on the distribution of place of death. In particular, given evidence that most cancer patients would prefer to die at home there is a need to examine the extent to which this preference is met differentially from place to place.

Methods: Using data on cancer deaths for a single Health Authority in North West England we conducted both small area and individual analyses of place of death, using binomial and binary logistic regression models, respectively.

Companions through cancer: the care given by informal carers in cancer contexts.

This paper explores the care-giving experiences of informal carers in cancer contexts, drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data generated in a 3 year study in the UK on the psychosocial needs of cancer patients and their main carers. The study adopted a sociological approach to psychosocial needs, in contrast to dominant psychological and psychiatric perspectives on such needs in psycho-oncology. Data collection methods involved a descriptive cross-sectional survey of carers (an achieved sample of 262 respondents, with similar numbers of male and female carers) followed by in-depth guided interviews with a sub-sample of surveyed carers (n = 32).