Disparities are inequalities or differences. A related concept is health inequities, which are avoidable inequalitiesrelated to health that stem from a form of injustice (Kawachi et al., 2002; McCartney et al., 2019). For example,children attending the Lincoln School may have higher rates of asthma than children attending the WashingtonSchool. The children are all the same age and have the same racial and ethnic distribution, but the parents ofchildren at the Washington School have a higher average income and donated money so that each classroom couldhave an air conditioner. There is a disparity in access to clean air, as well as in rates of asthma, between children atthese two schools. Health Disparities covers this topic in greater detail.

mproving the client experience of care (including quality and satisfaction),2. improving the health of populations,3. reducing the per capita cost of health care, and4. improving the well-being of health care professionals.

Health-related quality of life (HRQL) indicesare also used to quantify health and to analyze cost-effectiveness

The level and distribution of health outcomes in popula-tions result from a complex web of cultural, environmen-tal, political, social, economic, behavioral, and geneticfactors

Political determinants of health range from the relatively concrete (e.g., “voting behavior”) to thealmost hopelessly abstract (e.g., “power”). However, public health scholars—especially those whowork in a critical vein (Schrecker 2022)—have identified other, structural determinants of healththat are intertwined with and/or upstream of even the most abstract political factors. These includea variety of “-isms”: structural racism and sexism, colonialism, capitalism, and neoliberalism, all ofwhich are manifestations of power relations within or across societies.

While research in public health on the relationship between public health systems and healthoutcomes has been rare, there has been much greater attention to the effects of policies outside ofthe health system