Health care equity, health equity and resource allocation: towards a normative approach to achieving the core principles of th

Since the 1976 appointment of the Resource Allocation Working Party (RAWP), health care equity has been an explicit goal of resource allocation within the NHS. According to this principle, health care resources should be geographically distributed to ensure ‘equal opportunity of access to health care for people at equal risk’. RAWP was superseded by the Resource Allocation Group in 1995, which was in turn replaced by the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation (ACRA) in 1997. Throughout, equal opportunity of access for equal needs has remained a key objective of resource allocation. In 1999, however, ACRA introduced an additional requirement; that resource allocation should ‘contribute to the reduction of avoidable inequalities in health’. This interpretation of equity as an ‘equal opportunity to be healthy’ is otherwise known as health equity.