Similar patterns are seen when the US, Canada, and Sweden are compared on numerous social de- velopment and population health indicators [14,15]. Sweden fares the best, the US the worse, and Canada comes up the middle. These findings indicate that political and economic forces play a strong role in population health. Population health theory and re- search in Canada and elsewhere however, focus on a number of mid-level “social determinants of health” with little recognition of the role political and eco- nomic forces play in the quality of these health deter- minants [16–19]. Before considering these forces, a brief overview of various conceptualisations of social determinants of health is provided
