Events

Abstract: At a time of significant and growing social inequalities in health, this talk sets out how things can get better through enacting the right politics and policies. Drawing on our recent book, it examines four historical examples from across the world in which sizeable population-level reductions in health inequalities have been documented: the Great Society of the 1960s in the USA; democratisation in Brazil in the 1980s-2010s; German reunification in the 1990s; and the English Health Inequalities Strategy in the 2000’s. Four common ‘levelling’ mechanisms for reducing health inequalities that span the different examples are identified: welfare state expansion, improved healthcare access, reduced income inequalities and enhanced democratic engagement. The talk will also reflect on what happens to health inequalities when the converse situation occurs: when social safety nets are dismantled, accessing high-quality healthcare becomes more difficult, poverty and inequality increase, and political and civil rights begin to decay. Together, this ‘waxing and waning’ of attempts to equalise the social, economic and political determinants of health provide useful lessons about the political alliances and policy actions that will be required to reduce health inequalities in the future. The talk concludes by arguing that reducing health inequalities requires the political will – and resulting policy action - to implement long-term and wide-reaching macro-level policies.

The talk is based on the book ‘Getting Better’ by Clare Bambra, Julia Lynch and Katherine Smith – open access here: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/getting-better

The Sociology Seminar Series for Trinity Term is convened by Jan O Jonsson, Ridhi Kashyap, Colin Mills and Christiaan Monden. For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.