Tackling health inequalities: mission possible?

It is deeply unjust that some groups of people have significantly worse experiences of health and care than others. These differences in health experiences and outcomes are avoidable, unfair and systematic, and yet they continue to widen. Tackling health inequalities and improving health for the groups who typically experience the worst outcomes requires concerted action from across the health and care sector and more widely across government.

This conference will bring together those working in the health and care system across the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector, local government and beyond to explore how to deliver a ‘system shift’ on health inequalities – getting the levers right to make a difference to how the health and care system and its partners tackle health inequalities. It follows the publication of our recent long read, in which we reviewed more than one hundred pieces of work from The King’s Fund over the past five years involving a variety of people working in the NHS, local authorities, and the voluntary and private sectors, as well as people who experience the worst health outcomes. We identified seven key areas for action that we believe the new 10-year health plan should prioritise in order to better tackle health inequalities:

• Develop a cross-government health inequalities strategy for the 10-year health plan to feed into.
• Reorientate the NHS to focus on prevention.
• Radically change the relationships the NHS has with people and communities, from ‘power over' to ‘power with'.
• Tackle racism and discrimination in the NHS and cultivate a culture of compassion.
• Enable staff to identify and act on health inequalities and capture learning.
• Empower place-based partnerships to take more decisions about how NHS money is spent.
• Actively support local voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations through changes in financial planning and commissioning.

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