Social Epidemiology and the Work Environment

A major theme in virtually all of Bertil Gardell's work is that the social and work environment affects health and well-being. This concern with the social environment has been a major influence in the development of a new area of research referred to as social epidemiology. In this area of work, difficulties are increasingly being recognized in identifying specific social factors in the environment toward which intervention programs can be directed. An approach to this complex problem is to focus attention on the “mini-environment” of the workplace. Research here has yielded several interesting hypotheses that may have important implications for studies of the larger environment. These hypotheses involve the concepts of control and participation, concepts that are central to all of Garden's work.