Eliminating Health Inequalities – A Matter of Life and Death —TASC 2011
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Preface The World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health has spearheaded a renewed global concern with the social and economic factors that determine health status. Health status and inequalities in health between and within countries are primarily influenced by these factors. This report from TASC critiques these socio-economic factors from an Irish perspective and illustrates how responses to the current economic crisis are having a disproportionate impact on low-income and vulnerable groups. This will have a direct impact on their health status and exacerbate health inequalities in the years ahead. Even in the midst of crisis opportunities exist. This report identifies a wide ranging and comprehensive set of measures that can be used as a blueprint by the new Government to improve the health of the population as a whole and to put public policy on the path to eliminating health inequalities. However, these policy choices need advocates across a wide spectrum of stakeholders and they need to be prioritised and resourced. Our response to health inequalities and indeed health status for all has tended to be dominated by rhetoric rather than action. This report should therefore be used as a resource to wider civil society to make demands for action on health inequalities. Professor Joe Barry Chair of Population Health Medicine Department of Public Health and Primary Care Trinity College Dublin