Action on the Social Determinants of Health and Health Inequities Goes Global

Abstract

Marked health inequities exist between regions, between countries, and within countries. Reducing these inequities in health requires attention to the unfair distribution of power, money, and resources and the conditions of everyday life. These are the social determinants of health. The World Health Organization (WHO) Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH) brought together a global evidence base of what could be done to reduce these health inequities, demonstrating that economic and social policy, if done well, can improve health and health equity. A global movement for health equity was reignited by the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health when it made a call to action upon delivering its final report.

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Quality of Health Care

“…Race and ethnicity are often associated with multiple other dimensions of social disadvantage, including poverty, residential segregation, limited education, lack of employment, debt, low health literacy and low numeracy, and limited English proficiency (19). Greater cumulative social disadvantage is associated with worse health (52). African Americans, American Indian and Alaska Natives residing on reservations, and Pacific Islanders experience significantly worse health and lower life expectancies than whites do.…”

Mortality after near-miss obstetric complications in Burkina Faso: medical, social and health-care factors

“…In addition, ways of simultaneously addressing the social and economic determinants of health are receiving increasing attention. 39 Despite these policy changes and the greater priority afforded to maternal health both internationally and nationally, 40 achieving a comprehensive continuum of care remains challenging. For example, few health-care services address the specific needs of women in the year following childbirth.…”

The Growing Impact of Globalization for Health and Public Health Practice

“…economic interconnectedness as both cause and consequence of the distribution of international disease burdens, and a parallel recognition that many of the pressing health issues facing nations are now inherently transnational if not global, not only because of cross-border disease threats, but also because conditions of life and work that increase vulnerability to disease and affect access to preventive and treatment services are inseparable from global distributions of power, wealth, and resources (78). A further dimension is added by the expansion of research on social determinants of health (SDH), much of which was consolidated in 2008 by a World Health Organization commission on the topic (30; see also the article by Marmot & Friel in this volume (50)]. The insight that people's health is affected by their conditions of life and work is hardly new; public health activism around these conditions has a long if episodic history dating back at least to the Industrial Revolution.…”