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New Canadian Report Says Health Inequalities Are A Matter Of Fairness
And Justice And Calls For Action
“Key
Health Inequalities in Canada: A National Portrait” is a new
collaborative report by several agencies and groups which has found
that the “persistence, breadth, and depth of health inequalities in
Canada constitute a call to action across all levels and sectors of
society.”
Armed
with such a broad and far reaching conclusion, the report outlines
several recommended strategies for addressing the topic. These
strategies rely heavily on the work of the World Health Organization
over the past few years devoted to a better understanding of the
social determinants of health and providing a framework for addressing
them.
The
“principles for action” and “promising practices” highlighted in the
report are included below along with explanatory excerpts that expand
on the statements in bold.
Recommended Strategies
Adopt
a human rights approach to action on the social determinants of health
and health equity.
A human rights approach recognizes that equitable
access to opportunities for health, well-being, and their determinants
is an issue of fairness and justice.
Intervene across the life course with evidence-informed policies and
culturally safe health and social services.
Interventions at different life stages, particularly
during critical or sensitive periods (e.g. early years) can
substantially affect health outcomes and health equity.
Intervene on both proximal (downstream) and distal (upstream)
determinants of health and health equity.
Public health actions that focus on individual-level
behavioral determinants may inadvertently increase health inequalities
in the absence of accompanying efforts that target "upstream"
socioeconomic, political, cultural, and environmental factors.
Deploy
a combination of targeted interventions and universal
policies/interventions.
Pairing targeted and universal interventions helps
ensure that the targeted intervention effects are not "washed out" by
broader conditions that may sustain social inequalities.
Address both material contexts and sociocultural processes of power,
privilege, and exclusion.
Effective action on health equity must also include
efforts to empower disadvantaged communities and tackle the harmful
processes of marginalization and exclusion (e.g. systemic
discrimination and stigmatization) embedded in hierarchies of power
and privilege.
Implement a "Health in All Policies" approach.
Many of the policy levers that influence the social
determinants of health lie outside of the health sector and can only
be addressed through collaborative engagement with others.
Carry
out ongoing monitoring and evaluation.
Ongoing monitoring and reporting on the magnitude and
trends of health inequalities and their determinants supports public
actors in evaluating their progress.
Conclusion
According to the report’s conclusion, “…achieving the goal of health
equity demands that we acknowledge our interdependence-our shared
responsibility to create and sustain healthful living and working
conditions and environments, and the shared benefits that we can all
enjoy when those conditions are in place.”
To read the full report, visit:
https://bit.ly/2LWyel3 ■
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