[Health inequalities and occupational health]

There has been an emergent issue of health inequalities in Japan. Tackling health inequalities has been put on the primary agenda in the revised national health promotion campaign, so called "Kenko-Nippon-21"(Healthy Japan 21), which was announced in 2012. Against the background of this social movement, the present article argues how occupational health can contribute to health inequality issue based on the knowledge of public health and social epidemiology.Firstly, we reviewed a brief sketch of health inequality at occupational settings including position, job, and employment status. Secondly, we de scribed a conceptual model of a causal pathway of occupational class and health, based on the idea of life-course approach, and models such as cumulative model, trigger model and latent effect/sensitive period model. Finally, we proposed that health impact assessment as a tool to mitigate health inequality related to occupational policy.