| Keeping up with the pack: can government reduce health inequality? |
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Alasdair Murray and Edward Seed In ‘Keeping up with the pack: can government tackle health inequalities?’, Alasdair Murray finds that despite extensive government activity, health inequalities have actually widened since 1997. A man born in Kensington and Chelsea can expect to live over eleven years longer than a man born in Glasgow City. Mr Murray added: “Although Labour deserves praise for developing a relatively comprehensive programme to tackle health inequalities, the results have been mixed at best. Too often, the government has provided only short term responses to long term problems, not allowing reforms to bed in before changing direction. Its health inequalities targets are arbitrary, and they do not convey the full extent of the problem. "The government has also placed insufficient emphasis on rising public health threats, especially the worrying increase in obesity and mental health problems.” “Much of the policymaking in this area is being conducted in the dark – the government urgently needs to expand the evidence base and examine outcomes over the long term. Above all, resources need to be switched into targeted public health measures, to curb new health risks.” A PDF of the pamphlet is available here. |
