@Article{Kotowska2026,
journal="Journal of Health Inequalities",
issn="2450-5927",
volume="12",
number="1",
year="2026",
title="Socioeconomic conditions and health of Polish women: a historical and contemporary perspective",
abstract=" Women’s health in Poland has been shaped by successive historical transitions: interwar poverty and infectious disease, wartime destruction, post-war reconstruction, state-socialist health policy, market transformation after 1989, European Union accession, and the COVID-19 pandemic. These processes changed the dominant pattern of risk from undernutrition, communicable diseases, and limited access to maternity care toward non-communicable diseases, behavioural risk factors, multimorbidity, mental health burden, and persistent inequalities in access to prevention and care. This narrative review synthesizes historical and contemporary evidence on how socioeconomic conditions, healthcare access, gendered social roles and lifestyle-related risks have influenced the health status of Polish women from the interwar period to the post-pandemic period. A structured narrative search was conducted in January–February 2026 and  updated in May 2026. Peer-reviewed literature was searched in PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science , Google Scholar, the Polish Medical Bibliography and CEJSH. Official and grey literature sources were retrieved from Statistics Poland, the National Institute of Public Health NIH – National Research Institute, the Ministry of Health, the National Health Fund, WHO, OECD, Eurostat and EU institutional repositories. Historical monographs and primary historical sources were included only when they documented living conditions, work, reproductive constraints or healthcare access. The final synthesis was appraised using the Scale for the Assessment of Narrative Review Articles (SANRA). The evidence cannot be interpreted as a simple linear progression from deprivation to prosperity. Each period produced both health gains and new vulnerabilities. The main limitations are the heterogeneity of historical sources, incomplete pre-1989 statistical series, and the narrative rather than systematic-review design. Policies for women’s health in Poland should combine chronic-disease prevention with gender-sensitive social policy, stronger primary and mental healthcare, better rural transport and specialist access, restoration of delayed screening, and systematic monitoring of socioeconomic gradients in women’s morbidity, mortality and healthcare use. ",
author="Kotowska, Agata
and Lachowicz-Wiśniewska, Sabina",
pages="7--16",
doi="10.5114/jhi.2026.163389",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.5114/jhi.2026.163389"
}