TY - JOUR

T1 - Planning for health equity in the crossfire between science and policy

AU - Diderichsen, Finn

AU - Whitehead, Margaret

AU - Dahlgren, Göran

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - The persistence of health inequalities means that many public health professionals face an ongoing task to develop and update policies to tackle them. However, although the inequalities might be unchanged, the political priorities in the many policy areas involved are changing and the ambition to reduce the health divide is constantly facing strong forces pushing in the opposite direction. Recent proposals to re-think health inequalities need to be treated with caution because they are disconnected from what is needed for policy-making in this area. From our experience of 35 years in developing strategies to tackle health inequalities, we still see many entry points with space for local and national improvements, but it is crucial to ask the right questions. The aim of this Commentary is to present a new framework of eight questions that might provide a helpful structure for the necessary dialogue between researchers and policy-makers. Even if answers are not yet available for all of them, we believe that discussing them for a specific population in a specific political context will be fruitful to inform policy on the ground.

AB - The persistence of health inequalities means that many public health professionals face an ongoing task to develop and update policies to tackle them. However, although the inequalities might be unchanged, the political priorities in the many policy areas involved are changing and the ambition to reduce the health divide is constantly facing strong forces pushing in the opposite direction. Recent proposals to re-think health inequalities need to be treated with caution because they are disconnected from what is needed for policy-making in this area. From our experience of 35 years in developing strategies to tackle health inequalities, we still see many entry points with space for local and national improvements, but it is crucial to ask the right questions. The aim of this Commentary is to present a new framework of eight questions that might provide a helpful structure for the necessary dialogue between researchers and policy-makers. Even if answers are not yet available for all of them, we believe that discussing them for a specific population in a specific political context will be fruitful to inform policy on the ground.

U2 - 10.1177/14034948221082450

DO - 10.1177/14034948221082450

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 35319311

VL - 50

JO - Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, Supplement

JF - Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, Supplement

SN - 1403-4956

IS - 7

M1 - 1082450

ER -