Addressing health inequalities in Europe: key messages from the Joint Action Health Equity Europe (JAHEE)

Health inequalities within and between Member States of the European Union are widely recognized as a public health problem as they determine a significant share of potentially avoidable mortality and morbidity. After years of growing awareness and increasing action taken, a large gap still exists across Europe in terms of policy responses and governance. With the aim to contribute to achieve greater equity in health outcomes, in 2018 a new Joint Action, JAHEE, (Joint Action Health Equity Europe) was funded by the third EU Health Programme, with the main goal of strengthening cooperation between participating countries and of implementing concrete actions to reduce health inequalities. The partnership led by Italy counted 24 countries, conducting actions in five policy domains: monitoring, governance, healthy living environments, health systems and migration, following a three-step implementation approach. Firstly, specific Policy Frameworks for Action (PFA) collecting the available evidence on what practice should be done in each domain were developed. Second, different Country Assessments (CAs) were completed to check the country’s adherence to the recommended practice in each domain. The gap between the expected policy response (PFA) and the present policy response (CA) guided the choice of concrete actions to be implemented in JAHEE, many of which are continuing even after the end of JA. Final recommendations based on the best results achieved during JAHEE were elaborated and agreed jointly with the representatives of the involved Ministries of Health. The JAHEE initiative represented an important opportunity for the participating countries to work jointly, and the results show that almost all have increased their level of action and strengthened their capacities to address health inequalities.