Deposited in DRO : 24 June 2013 Version of attached le : Published Version Peer-review status of attached

Globalization is a key context for the study of social determinants of health (SDH). Broadly stated, SDH are the conditions in which people live and work, and that affect their opportunities to lead healthy lives. In this first article of a three-part series, we describe the origins of the series in work conducted for the Globalization Knowledge Network of the World Health Organization's Commission on Social Determinants of Health and in the Commission's specific concern with health equity. We explain our rationale for defining globalization with reference to the emergence of a global marketplace, and the economic and political choices that have facilitated that emergence. We identify a number of conceptual milestones in studying the relation between globalization and SDH over the period 1987–2005, and then show that because globalization comprises multiple, interacting policy dynamics, reliance on evidence from multiple disciplines (transdisciplinarity) and research methodologies is required. So, too, is explicit recognition of the uncertainties associated with linking globalization – the quintessential "upstream" variable – with changes in SDH and in health outcomes. Background: health equity and the social determinants of health This article is the first in a series of three that together describe research strategies to address the relation between contemporary globalization and the social determinants of health (SDH) through an 'equity lens,' and invite dialogue and debate about preliminary findings. The global commitment to health equity is not new; in 1978, the landmark United Nations conference in AlmaAta declared the goal of health for all by the year 2000 [1]. Yet in 2007, despite progress toward that goal, millions of people die or are disabled each year from causes that are easily preventable or treatable [2]. Recent reviews [3,4] of research on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, communicable diseases that together account for almost six million deaths per year, identify poverty, gender inequality, development policy and health sector 'reforms' that involve user fees and reduced access to care as contributors. More than 10 million children under the age of five die each year, "almost all in low-income countries or poor areas of middle-income countries" [5](p. 65; see also [6]) and from causes of death that are rare in the industrialized world. Undernutrition – an unequivocally economic phenomenon, resulting from inadequate access to the resources for producing food or the income for purchasing it – is an underlying cause of roughly half these deaths Published: 19 June 2007 Globalization and Health 2007, 3:5 doi:10.1186/1744-8603-3-5 Received: 24 July 2006 Accepted: 19 June 2007 This article is available from: http://www.globalizationandhealth. com/content/3/1/5 © 2007 Labonté and Schrecker; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Globalization and Health 2007, 3:5 http://www.globalizationandhealth. com/content/3/1/5