K. Garthwaite
Desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities: perspectives of UK researchers on past, present and future directions in health inequalities research
Garthwaite, K.; Smith, K.E.; Bambra, C.; Pearce, J.
Authors
K.E. Smith
C. Bambra
J. Pearce
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.
Citation
Garthwaite, K., Smith, K., Bambra, C., & Pearce, J. (2016). Desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities: perspectives of UK researchers on past, present and future directions in health inequalities research. Sociology of Health & Illness, 38(3), 459-478. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12374
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Sep 1, 2015 |
Online Publication Date | Nov 20, 2015 |
Publication Date | Mar 1, 2016 |
Deposit Date | Jan 4, 2016 |
Publicly Available Date | Apr 14, 2016 |
Journal | Sociology of Health & Illness |
Print ISSN | 0141-9889 |
Electronic ISSN | 1467-9566 |
Publisher | Wiley |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 38 |
Issue | 3 |
Pages | 459-478 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12374 |
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Copyright Statement
© 2015 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for SHIL. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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