Trial Lecture - time and place
See Trial Lecture.
Adjudication committee
- 1st opponent: Professor Tinna Laufey Ásgeirsdóttir, University of Iceland
- 2nd opponent: Professor Paul Dickman, Karolinska Institutet
- Committee Chair: Associate Professor Øyvind Næss, University of Oslo
Chair of the Defence
Professor Nina Køpke Vøllestad
Principal Supervisor
Professor Tor Iversen
Summary
The thesis - Essays on socioeconomic health inequalities within a setting of specialist health care - consists of four articles on socioeconomic differences in health and
health care in Norway. The thesis investigates three separate patient populations.
In the first article, differences in use of cardiac services for infarction patients are assessed with regard to survival for Norway and Finland. In both countries, cardiac services contribute toward higher survival by income, but not by education. The magnitude of the contribution is, however, minor when compared to overall survival differences by income and education.
The second article evaluates the introduction of a screening program for breast cancer in Norway, regarding the effect this program has for survival differences between education groups. It is shown that the decrease in patient mortality is by lower cancer stage-specific mortality at the introduction of the program. The mortality differences by education are reduced, primarily due to fewer differences by cancer stage.
In the third article, a cohort of children born very prematurely is followed by the use
of hospital care, through the ages one to nine. Compared to children whose
maternal grandparents have lower education, the children of higher educated
maternal grandparents use equal amounts of hospital care between 1-4 years of
age, but a lesser degree of hospital care between 5-9 years.
In the fourth article, the differences by educational level in post-infarction survival are compared to the survival differences in the general population. Similar socioeconomic differences exist in the general population, although these are less pronounced. The analysis demonstrates that, of the differences accruing among patients, only some are amenable to change by health services from a disease-specific perspective.
Additional information
Contact the research support staff.