Piroska Östlin of the WHO, Copenhagen, Denmark and colleagues argue in this week's PLoS Medicine that a paradigm shift is needed to keep the focus on health equity within the social determinants of health research agenda. The authors recommend four priority areas for future research on health equity, and suggest possible steps for advancing such an agenda, such as creating a critical mass of researchers and refining norms and standards for the monitoring and assessment of health inequalities.

The authors say: "The new paradigm makes explicit that health systems and the people who use them exist within a social context that can powerfully determine peoples' chances to be healthy not only through access to health services, but also through access to a range of other resources, opportunities, and rights: the social determinants of health."