A study by Galea et al. published in the August edition of the American Journal of Public Health concludes that the estimated number of deaths attributable to social factors in the United States is comparable to the number attributed to pathophysiological and behavioral causes.  Based on studies published between 1980 and 2007 with estimates of the relation between social factors and adult all-cause mortality, the authors estimated the relative risk of mortality associated with each social factor and obtained an estimate of the prevalence of each social factor in the United States.  From these, they calculated the number of deaths attributable to each social factor in the United States in 2000.  They estimated that approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States in 2000 were attributable to low education, 176,000 to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty.  The social factors used in the analysis are highly interrelated and therefore the deaths attributed to each may not be mutually exclusive.