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Desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities: perspectives of UK researchers on past, present and future directions in health inequalities research

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Clare Bambra

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

Following government commitments to reducing health inequalities from 1997 onwards, the UK has been recognised as a global leader in health inequalities research and policy. Yet health inequalities have continued to widen by most measures, prompting calls for new research agendas and advocacy to facilitate greater public support for the upstream policies that evidence suggests are required. However, there is currently no agreement as to what new research might involve or precisely what public health egalitarians ought to be advocating. This article presents an analysis of discussions among 52 researchers to consider the feasibility that research-informed advocacy around particular solutions to health inequalities may emerge in the UK. The data indicate there is a consensus that more should be been done to learn from post-1997 efforts to reduce health inequalities, and an obvious desire to provide clearer policy guidance in future. However, discussions as to where researchers should now focus their efforts and with whom researchers ought to be engaging reveal three distinct ways of approaching health inequalities, each of which has its own epistemological foundations. Such differences imply that a consensus on reducing health inequalities is unlikely to materialise. Instead, progress seems most likely if all three approaches are simultaneously enabled.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Garthwaite K, Smith K, Bambra C, Pearce J

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Sociology of Health and Illness

Year: 2016

Volume: 38

Issue: 3

Pages: 459-478

Print publication date: 01/03/2016

Online publication date: 20/11/2015

Acceptance date: 01/01/2016

Date deposited: 05/02/2017

ISSN (print): 0141-9889

ISSN (electronic): 1467-9566

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12374

DOI: 10.1111/1467-9566.12374


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