Pathways of influence on equity in health.

An increasing number of studies are documenting the existence of inequities, and attention is now turning to exploring pathways through which they are generated and might be attacked. This appears to be an opportune time to consider what has been learned and what future directions might be taken by researchers to fill gaps in knowledge and make research more useful for policy interventions. This commentary briefly reviews some of the main contributions of past research that have possible relevance to pathways, considers what those pathways might include, and concludes with implications for future research. It makes the case for a conceptualization of influences on equity that explicitly includes distribution of health as an outcome as well as characteristics of the society as influences.