What Should Government Priorities Be When Developing Health Policy-To Reduce Inequalities In Health Or to Raise Standards of Health Overall?



What Should Government Priorities Be When Developing Health Policy-To Reduce Inequalities In Health Or to Raise Standards of Health Overall?

Introduction

I think that reducing inequalities in health should be the government first priority and I discuss this in the following lines in a concise way using the sources mentioned in the list of references.

Halpern (2005) mentions health inequalities and research related to this topic have been an important concern in medical sociology for decades, but the term health disparities/inequalities has become more central in medical sociology as well as in public health and medicine more broadly during the past decade. Sometimes the research area is also known as health inequalities, especially outside the United States. Within the United States, this area of research has received more attention because a reduction in health disparities/inequalities has been listed as one of the major goals of the Healthy People 2010 report, a major goal setting and reporting effort within public health and the U.K. government. As specified by the goals of that project, the United States strives to eliminate health disparities/inequalities among segments of the population, including differences that occur by gender, race or ethnicity, education or income, disability, geographic location, or sexual orientation (Halpern, 2005). Collection and reporting of data on health care disparities/inequalities are complex. This entry focuses on the U.K. effort to eliminate health disparities/inequalities, with some comments about related issues from other countries.

U.K. Government Efforts Related to Health inequalities

At all level of the U.K. government, one of the first pushes for concern about health disparities/inequalities was a report by the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler (1983-1985). This landmark report revealed large and persistent gaps in health status among Americans of different racial and ethnic groups. Because of this report, the Office of Minority Health (OMH) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was created with a mission to address these disparities/inequalities within the nation. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), another U.K. government agency that focuses on public health and epidemiology, also established its own Office of the Associate Director for Minority Health (ADMH) in 1988 in response to the same report. This unit became the CDC's OMH in 2002, and was given the mission of promoting health and quality of life by preventing and controlling the disproportionate burden of disease, injury, and disability among racial and ethnic minority populations (Wilkinson, 1996). In 2005, the OMH was expanded to create the new Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities/inequalities (OMHD) in CDC. The mission of the renamed agency was broadened, with a focus on reducing health disparities/inequalities experienced by populations defined by race/ethnicity, SES, geography, gender, age, disability status, and risk status related to sex and gender (Wilkinson, 1996).

During the same period, one of the pushes for more research on health care inequalities came from the passage of Public Law 106-129, the Healthcare ...