Advancing Spatial Health Inequalities Research: Innovations in Data, Methods, and Theory—Special Issue Introduction

Inequalities in population health outcomes, often captured between or within areas, remain a widespread feature of societies around the world. Many of these inequalities are deeply rooted in structural mechanisms, stemming from long-standing disparities in the distribution of and access to key resources impacting health. Despite extensive research and policy efforts to reduce these spatial health inequalities, many have proven persistent—and some have further widened within recent years. This special issue seeks to deepen our understanding of spatial health inequalities by showcasing a range of innovations in an increasingly interdisciplinary field. All included contributions are novel and often extend well-established approaches within their respective core disciplines either analytically or conceptually. Despite a high degree of innovation, causality remains a central challenge. Most contributions highlight these persistent difficulties in causal inference explicitly, calling for integrative frameworks that combine quantitative, qualitative, and participatory methods. Collectively, this special issue demonstrates how interdisciplinary collaboration can deepen our understanding of spatial health inequalities and their determinants. At the same time, findings highlight clearly that a real-world narrowing of spatial health inequalities will very likely also depend on the effective translation of evidence into actionable policy recommendations and political will.