This 40-page guide is available in English and is intended for entry level public health professionals and environmental health specialists alike. This guide describes a method for measuring the distribution of health risk factors as a function of socioeconomic position. An overview of the method and its requirements are first described, followed by a step-by-step numerical example that uses data for Pakistan. In the numerical example, we focus on income poverty as the measure of socioeconomic position, and we use child malnutrition as the health risk factor. The example uses World Bank estimates of income poverty, individual level survey data on the distribution of risk factors by socioeconomic position, and external estimates of the prevalence of the risk factor. From this information, we estimate the risk factor prevalence by category of income poverty, as well as the impact fractions (or attributable risks). Problems in estimating the disease burden of socioeconomic position are also discussed.
