Challenging inequities in health : from ethics to action : summary

Abstract

Challenging Inequities in Health, was conceived as a response to the following: 1. Concerns about widening “health gaps” both between and within countries; 2. A disproportionate research focus on inequalities in health in the “North” to the relative neglect of the “South”; and 3. Inadequate analytic tools and pragmatic policies to redress health inequities.

Through a collective effort of researchers and practitioners called the Global Health Equity Initiative (GHEI), a set of in-depth country studies and conceptual analyses on health equity were undertaken. The main findings of this effort are presented in this book with the central claim that issues of equity, or distributive justice, deserve primary consideration in health and social policy deliberations.

Insights about health equity from the fields of epidemiology, demography, economics and other disciplines are brought to life in case studies from Bangladesh, Chile, China, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam. The subject matter ranges from adolescent livelihoods in Tanzania to the health burden of peoples living in marginalized counties in Mexico, from the historical antecedents of health equity in Japan to the recent increase in the gender gap in life expectancy in Russia.

As a group, the studies point unambiguously to the existence and multiple dimensions of inequities in health around the globe—in rich and poor countries alike.