Impact of socioeconomic status on cardiovascular outcomes in Canada.

Socioeconomic status is an important predictor of cardiovascular health and outcomes both in Canada and worldwide. Social epidemiologists have struggled to identify the causal pathways that link poverty with death. While some have hypothesized that socioeconomic-outcome disparities are merely an epiphenomenon of analytic pitfalls, others perceive that wealth-health gradients are attributable to variations in patient biology, disparities in care or both. In this review, the background literature surrounding socioeconomic-outcome gradients in cardiovascular disease are briefly summarized. The Socioeconomic and Acute Myocardial Infarction study, has been designed to further understand the intermediary pathways which link socioeconomic status to outcomes following acute myocardial infarction.