European Commission sets out new actions on health inequalities Methodological issues in the analysis of survey data How do welfare policies contribute to the reduction of health inequalities? Eurohealth is a quarterly publication that provides a forum for researchers, experts and policymakers to express their views on health policy issues and so contribute to a constructive debate on health po...

The World Health Report 2000 proposed three fundamental goals for health systems encompassing population health, health care finance and health systems responsiveness. The goals incorporate both an efficiency and equity dimension. While inequalities in population health and health care finance have motivated two important strands of research, inequalities in responsiveness have received less at...

BACKGROUND The Department of Health is encouraging health authorities to improve health status by tackling health inequalities. We defined ward level spatial health variations in Trent National Health Service Region, England, investigated urban and rural inequalities, and examined the relationship with deprivation, to identify the extent of small area health inequalities and to establish whethe...

Around the world, rising health-care costs are claiming an increasing share of national budgets. In September, 2013, the French Government launched a comprehensive national health strategy to address fi nancial issues under national health insurance, health-care reform, public health issues, and social aspects of health inequalities. This strategy will inform preparations for a new health law t...

BACKGROUND Previous studies have reported large socioeconomic inequalities in mortality from conditions amenable to medical intervention, but it is unclear whether these can be attributed to inequalities in access or quality of health care, or to confounding influences such as inequalities in background risk of diseases. We therefore studied whether inequalities in mortality from conditions ame...

BACKGROUND Despite a wealth of research and policy initiatives, progress in tackling the UK's health inequalities has been limited. This article explores whether there appears to be consensus among researchers about the kinds of policies likely to reduce health inequalities. METHODS Ninety-nine proposals for addressing health inequalities were identified from multiple sources. Forty-one resea...

INTRODUCTION Recent research on health inequalities moves beyond illustrating the importance of psychosocial factors for health to a more in-depth study of the specific psychosocial pathways involved. Social capital is a concept that captures both a buffer function of the social environment on health, as well as potential negative effects arising from social inequality and exclusion. This syste...

BACKGROUND The progress in coverage of maternal health services in Ethiopia has been rather slow over the past decade and consequently the maternal mortality ratio was very high (673 per 100,000 live births) among the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and remained constant during 2005-11 period. Earlier studies have mostly focused on determinants of maternal health seeking behavior in Ethiopia. H...

BACKGROUND Socioeconomic inequalities are a key policy challenge. Studies to date have not taken a unified approach to assess how socioeconomic inequalities in health, behaviour and educational attainment change as children age. METHODS We examined maternal education inequalities in multiple offspring health, behavioural and educational outcomes and how these changed across childhood and adol...

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE Children and women comprise vulnerable populations in terms of health and are gravely affected by the impact of economic inequalities through multi-dimensional channels. Urban areas are believed to have better socioeconomic and maternal and child health indicators than rural areas. This perception leads to the implementation of health policies ignorant of intra-urban health...