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Desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities: perspectives of UK researchers on past, present and future directions in health inequalities research

Following government commitments to reducing health inequalities from 1997 onwards, the UK has been recognised as a global leader in health inequalities research and policy. Yet health inequalities have continued to widen by most measures, prompting calls for new research agendas and advocacy to fac...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Garthwaite, Kayleigh, Smith, Katherine E., Bambra, Clare, Pearce, Jamie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4950297/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27358991
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12374
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author Garthwaite, Kayleigh
Smith, Katherine E.
Bambra, Clare
Pearce, Jamie
author_facet Garthwaite, Kayleigh
Smith, Katherine E.
Bambra, Clare
Pearce, Jamie
author_sort Garthwaite, Kayleigh
collection PubMed
description Following government commitments to reducing health inequalities from 1997 onwards, the UK has been recognised as a global leader in health inequalities research and policy. Yet health inequalities have continued to widen by most measures, prompting calls for new research agendas and advocacy to facilitate greater public support for the upstream policies that evidence suggests are required. However, there is currently no agreement as to what new research might involve or precisely what public health egalitarians ought to be advocating. This article presents an analysis of discussions among 52 researchers to consider the feasibility that research‐informed advocacy around particular solutions to health inequalities may emerge in the UK. The data indicate there is a consensus that more should be been done to learn from post‐1997 efforts to reduce health inequalities, and an obvious desire to provide clearer policy guidance in future. However, discussions as to where researchers should now focus their efforts and with whom researchers ought to be engaging reveal three distinct ways of approaching health inequalities, each of which has its own epistemological foundations. Such differences imply that a consensus on reducing health inequalities is unlikely to materialise. Instead, progress seems most likely if all three approaches are simultaneously enabled.
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spelling pubmed-49502972016-07-28 Desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities: perspectives of UK researchers on past, present and future directions in health inequalities research Garthwaite, Kayleigh Smith, Katherine E. Bambra, Clare Pearce, Jamie Sociol Health Illn Original Articles Following government commitments to reducing health inequalities from 1997 onwards, the UK has been recognised as a global leader in health inequalities research and policy. Yet health inequalities have continued to widen by most measures, prompting calls for new research agendas and advocacy to facilitate greater public support for the upstream policies that evidence suggests are required. However, there is currently no agreement as to what new research might involve or precisely what public health egalitarians ought to be advocating. This article presents an analysis of discussions among 52 researchers to consider the feasibility that research‐informed advocacy around particular solutions to health inequalities may emerge in the UK. The data indicate there is a consensus that more should be been done to learn from post‐1997 efforts to reduce health inequalities, and an obvious desire to provide clearer policy guidance in future. However, discussions as to where researchers should now focus their efforts and with whom researchers ought to be engaging reveal three distinct ways of approaching health inequalities, each of which has its own epistemological foundations. Such differences imply that a consensus on reducing health inequalities is unlikely to materialise. Instead, progress seems most likely if all three approaches are simultaneously enabled. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2015-11-20 2016-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4950297/ /pubmed/27358991 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12374 Text en © 2015 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for SHIL. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Garthwaite, Kayleigh
Smith, Katherine E.
Bambra, Clare
Pearce, Jamie
Desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities: perspectives of UK researchers on past, present and future directions in health inequalities research
title Desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities: perspectives of UK researchers on past, present and future directions in health inequalities research
title_full Desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities: perspectives of UK researchers on past, present and future directions in health inequalities research
title_fullStr Desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities: perspectives of UK researchers on past, present and future directions in health inequalities research
title_full_unstemmed Desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities: perspectives of UK researchers on past, present and future directions in health inequalities research
title_short Desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities: perspectives of UK researchers on past, present and future directions in health inequalities research
title_sort desperately seeking reductions in health inequalities: perspectives of uk researchers on past, present and future directions in health inequalities research
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4950297/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27358991
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12374
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