• Health research

Health research

This article, from the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, outlines how health research needs to focus on promoting health equity. It argues that research and interventions focus only on the technical, clinical or financial dimensions of health interventions and systems and lose sight of the structural (political and economic) and social dimensions. Promoting health equity requires: integrated action to develop healthier environments; improved access to appropriate universal health systems; and priority interventions and programmes within health systems where the burden of disease is greatest.

The authors argue that there is a growing evidence base on health equity, but a lack of policy-relevant synthesis. In order to support improvements in health equity, gaps need to be filled in five distinct but interrelated areas: global factors and processes that affect health equity and/or constrain what countries can do to address health inequities within their own borders; societal and political structures and relationships that differentially affect people’s chances of being healthy within a given society; interrelationships between factors at the individual level and within the social context that increase or decrease the likelihood of achieving and maintaining good health; characteristics of the health care system that influence health equity; and effective policy interventions to reduce health inequity in the first four areas. [adapted from author]

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