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National Level Policies

The National Level Policies section of the portal provides an overview of
the actual situation concerning actions to tackle health inequalities in the
different European countries.

This part of the portal is currently being developed, the information for the remaining countries will continuously be completed.

In addition to the national level portraits of the individual countries the
overview analysis has been conducted and its initial results have been
published in EuroHealth magazine (EuroHealth, 11:2 p.24).

Download the final 'Closing the Gap' publication: Taking Action on Health Equity.

This publication contains summaries of what each of the 21 ´Closing the Gap´ partners are doing to address health inequalities in their countries, as well as the conclusions and recommendations of this 3-year initiative.

Results of the same country

List all good practice projects of the actual country.

You are here: > National Level Policies > England > Policies, strategies and other documents > Driven by non-health sector

Policies and Strategies that are Driven by the Non-Health Sector

Addressing SDHI in employment strategies
Promoting work and tackling poverty are key elements of a social determinants of health approach. A range of Department of Work and Pensions programmes contribute to addressing the wider social determinants of health. These include:

• health at work, including helping people with health problems and disabilities back into the labour market
• helping people who are unemployed return to the labour market
• providing extra (financial) support to working families and older people

DWP has recently set up a joint child poverty unit with DCSF (Department for Children, Schools and Families) to link across to the skills agenda and the work on Sure Start Children's Centres. Health is a key player in these centres, chiefly through reducing in health inequalities in  families, mothers and early years' children.

Child Poverty Strategy
The Department of Work and Pensions has recognized that health inequalities and the wider determinants of health are a key component in the Child Poverty Strategy and the National Action Plan on Social Exclusion. Reducing child poverty has a direct impact on the national health inequalities target. This is reflected in the inclusion of child poverty as one of 12 national headline indicators which are used to report developments against the national health inequalities strategy, ‘Tackling Health Inequalities - A Programme for Action’. A regular update on the strategy and the national target, including the 12 headline indicators, is published. The latest is the 2007 Status Report on the Programme for Action, which was published in March 2008. This reports 600,000 children have been taken out of poverty since 1995-97.

The national health inequalities target includes action on reducing the infanty mortality gap between the routine and manual group and the population as a whole. A recent review of the infant mortality aspect of the target modelled the impact of meeting the infant mortality target. It found a significant impact, estimated at three percentage points against a target of reducing the gap by 10 percentage points. Child poverty is part of the agenda for addressing infant mortality as a way of extending the focus away from health services to the wider determinants (e.g. through joint NHS and local authority action).  Housing and overcrowding issues are also part of this wider agenda.The 2007 Status Report reported that the proportion of children in England living in low income households has fallen since the baseline of 1998-99.  This fall is for both relative and absolute low income measures, both before and after housing cost measures. On the basis of the modelling, this will have contributed to reducing health inequalities.

The Department of Work and Pensions works with the Department of Health and other relevant departments through a Cabinet Committee on Health and Well Being. This Cabinet Committee has cross-government oversight of the health improvement and health inequalities agenda, and though bi-lateral and multi-lateral contacts at the official level.