health inequalities

Health inequalities in Scotland

Audit that aims to assess how well public sector organisations are working together to tackle health inequalities. Given the scale and complexity of the problem, the detail the impact of wider policies such as education, employment and housing on reducing health inequalities, is not examined.

Instead it focuses on how bodies work together to identify need, target resources and monitor their collective performance in reducing health inequalities. The report:

Social capital and health: findings from the Scottish Health Survey and Scottish Social Attitudes Survey

Paper that explores the Scottish evidence for a link between social capital and health outcomes in order to inform the ongoing development of an assets-based approach to addressing health problems and inequalities.

It uses data from two sources - the 2009 Scottish Health Survey and the 2009 Scottish Social Attitudes survey, although the majority of the paper focuses on the former due to the inclusion of self-assessed health plus WEMWBS variables.

NICE's social value judgements about equity in health and health care

Paper that aims to describe the social value judgements about equity in health and health care that NICE has hitherto used to guide its decision making.

To do this, it reviews both the general social value judgements reported in NICE guidance on methodology and the case-specific social value judgements reported in NICE guidance about particular health care technologies and public health interventions.

Asset based approaches for health improvement: redressing the balance

The aim of this briefing paper is to present the current evidence and thinking on asset based approaches for health improvement, the background and rationale for these approaches, and the practical challenges of adopting these approaches in reality.

It is also hoped that it will help stimulate policy makers, practitioners and researchers to think differently about how they might minimise the risks of widening health inequalities and approach the goal of improving the health of communities and populations.

Health promotion, inequalities and young people's health : a systematic review of research

This study describes how much health promotion and public health intervention research has focused on inequalities in young people’s health; and what methods have been used to define and measure inequalities This systematic review was published by EPPI-Centre in 2008. Systematic reviews aim to find as much as possible of the research relevant to the particular research questions, and use explicit methods to identify what can reliably be said on the basis of these studies.

Inequalities and the mental health of young people : a systematic review of secondary school-based cognitive behavioural interventions

The aim of this report is to increase what is known about promoting good mental health and mental health inequalities. It focuses on the role of interventions based on the techniques of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for preventing and reducing suicidality, depression and anxiety in young people. A further aim of the study is to use the systematic review as a case study to applying an ‘equity lens’ to a review topic, by building on work completed in an earlier systematic map and methodological review. This systematic review was published by EPPI-Centre in 2009.