Social Medicine in the Twenty-First Century

In its launch issue in October 2004, PLoS Medicine signaled a strong interest in creating a journal that to the social conditions in which people live and work. The socially disadvantaged have less access to health services, and get sicker and die earlier than the privileged. Despite impressive technological advances in medicine, global health inequalities are worsening. While an understanding of these largescale forces remains social medicine’s base and one of its most important tasks, this special collection shows the ways in which fi ner-grained social forces have an equally important effect on health. The different levels at which social forces operate can be considered as four primary domains, beginning in the clinical encounter and opening outward to society and the globe. Editorial for a series of articles on social medicine. [Editorial for the series of articles on social medicine in PLoS Medicine, October 2006.]