tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3955304210599373230.post6172214536941629990..comments2024-03-28T17:50:40.478+00:00Comments on Fuse open science blog: Doing something about inequalities in healthFusehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02167289608282259405noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3955304210599373230.post-35567636433274502502013-02-13T09:27:48.171+00:002013-02-13T09:27:48.171+00:00Hi Jean,
I think you are absolutely right on this...Hi Jean,<br /><br />I think you are absolutely right on this. I think public health as a whole - not just academia - needs to get better at commenting on inequalities.<br /><br />I also think we need to get better at making the case for reducing inequalities. Within the public health sphere, it's pretty much taken as read that this is the right approach, but I'm not sure that's understood in the same way outside of the public health sphere. I'm pretty sure the debate in the UK is more to the left than, say, in the USA; but still I think we need to continue to argue for reducing health inequalities. <br /><br />I think there's a (growing) part of the political class and society at large which increasingly questions the scale of the redistribution of wealth: the "I pay my taxes, and I want services to match" model. And from an individualistic rather than population perspective, it *is* hard to justify why, for example, hospitals serving the South East, where individuals (generally) pay much more in tax, get (approx) the same level of service as the North East, where tax income is so much smaller. And similarly, why shouldn't richer people have "better" health, in the same way that they have "better" houses, cars, and so forth?<br /><br />So, I guess what I'm saying is that we need to remember to say not just that policy X will have a negative impact on health inequalities, but we need to explain why that is bad for the country as a whole. I don't think it's a hard case to make, but we can't assume that it's so obvious as to not require repeated elucidation.<br /><br />And also: it will be interesting to see the impact on media representation of these issues of a large of the PH workforce moving into the civil service.Simon Howardhttp://sjhoward.co.uk/noreply@blogger.com