Causal Inference and the People's Health

In Causality and the People's Health, Sharon Schwartz and Seth J. Prins offer both a synthesis of the dominant school of thought around social causality and propose a new approach that keeps causal concepts as an organizing principle without marginalizing social phenomena. This book explores how our definitions of causes in epidemiology influence how we go about finding them and estimating their effects. It examines debates about these issues, critiques inadequate attempts at their resolution, and offers a path forward--one that expands causal inference, and the purview of epidemiology, to include social forces as causes of the people's health.

Sharon Schwartz is a Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. She is the training coordinator for the Psychiatric Epidemiology Training Program. Her main research interests are in the relationship between social statuses and psychiatric disorders, and how causal frameworks shape research processes.

Seth J. Prins is Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University.
He is a social and psychiatric epidemiologist whose two programs of research concern the collateral public health consequences of mass criminalization and mass incarceration, and how the division and structure of labor influence mental illness and substance use. His research integrates advanced epidemiologic methods with contemporary social theory to operationalize criminalization, punishment, and social class as dynamic relational processes rather than individual attributes.