A new research article from the SCPHRP team, led by Prof. John Frank, has explored the evidence supporting seven potential societal investments (aimed at different stages of the lifecourse) that could help improve health and reduce health inequalities. The research team used hard-to-find comparable analyses of routinely collected data to gauge the relative extent to which these investments have been pursued and achieved their expected goals in Scotland, as compared with England and Wales in recent decades.
Despite Scotland’s longstanding explicit goal of reducing health inequalities, it has recently been doing slightly better than England and Wales on only one broad indicator of health-equity-related investments: childhood poverty. However, on the following indicators of other ‘best investments for health equity’, Scotland has not achieved demonstrably more equitable outcomes by SEP than the rest of the UK: infant mortality and teenage pregnancy rates; early childhood education implementation; standardised educational attainment after primary/secondary school; healthcare system access and performance; protection of the population from potentially hazardous patterns of food, drink and gambling use; unemployment.
The article is free to access by either clicking the image to the right, or using the link below.
