Tackling Health Inequalities

Creating a framework to assess the impact of financial interventions on health and socio-economic indicators.

Project status

Ongoing

Introduction

Improving population health and reducing inequity is a critical issue that requires systemic interventions. All around the world, declines in life expectancy, widening inequalities in health, food and fuel insecurity, climate change, and restricted government budgets compound to make public health one of the greatest challenges that policymakers must face. As a systemic problem, public health cannot be tackled in isolation from other policy dimensions; hence, a holistic approach across public policy areas towards achieving good health outcomes for all is required. The World Health Organisation is leading a programme to support international governments to place wellbeing at the heart of economic recovery, underpinned by the principle that public investment and spending should be guided by the extent to which a policy, service or organisation can improve population and societal wellbeing.

To advance this initiative, we propose a comprehensive framework based on the Policy Priority Inference methodology to assess the impact of financial interventions on large sets of health and socio-economic indicators across population sub-groups. Our approach accounts for wider contextual drivers of decision-making, the complexity of wellbeing as a multidimensional concept, and the interdependencies between policy domains, while including consideration of equity. This project has the potential to revolutionise the way in which we consider the relationship between the economy and health across sectors and deliver a valuable tool for future health policy in an area of international importance.

Organisers

Dr Alisha Davies

Head of Research and Evaluation, Public Health Wales and Co-chair of Clinical AI Interest Group