Addressing Health Inequalities the Third Sector Way - the Marmot Review
For those who have not seen it, the Marmot Review of Health Inequalities has been published and is available at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/gheg/marmotreview.
From our point of view (and aware of the pitfalls of confirmation bias) there are a few key messages to encourage us in our mission to promote third sector engagement in the agenda and to drive mainstream resources further down to support the community level activity that is happening with lots of enthusiasm and passion, but not always the practical encouragement from agencies, charged with delivery, but constrained by reductionist and risk averse processes.
So here are Du's selected nuggets from Marmot's executive summary:
- Reducing health inequalities is a matter of fairness and social justice
- Health inequalities result from social inequalities. Action on health inequalities requires action across all the social determinants of health
- Economic growth is not the most important measure of our country's success (are you listening at the RDA?)
- Delivering these policy objectives will require action by central and local government, the NHS, the third and private sectors and community groups
- Effective local delivery requires effective participatory decision-making at a local level. This can only happen by empowering individuals and local communities
A conference - Marmot and the Third Sector - will take place in London next month to unveil the findings of the Marmot Review. VONNE will be attending from the North East. For more information follow the link http://www.regionalvoices.net/events/.
Du is working with 5 Durham communities and the NHS on the Healthy Village Challenge, which starts in April this year. This innovative project aims to promote healthier lifestyles by engaging folks at a local level to work peer-to-peer in a friendly competition to raise the health indicators of their village - and they get a delegated budget to buy in the interventions they think will help.
www.hi3.org.uk is still live and we are exploring next steps with partners. If that's you, get in touch. We have had some amazing feedback on the Sage event, including lots of oblique and unintended, serendipitous outcomes.
Steve Day