Reduce Inequalities In Health

The NHS was set up in 1948 in order to improve the health of the nation.

Discuss how effective it has been in reducing inequalities in health in the UK.

Introduction

This essay will discuss about the health factors that might lead to inequalities in health, the reasons that influenced that start-up of the NHS and all the factors and effectiveness of the NHS. The essay will also talk about the how effective the NHS has been in reducing inequalities in health.

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To start with, according to the WHO ‘health is the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ health will be impossible to achieve if defined this way because things like war, unemployment, disease and poverty

The black report which was published and issued in 1980 was written by Sir Douglas Black, it demonstrated that although overall health had improved since the introduction of the welfare state, there were widespread health inequalities .It also found that the main cause of these inequalities was economic inequality. The report showed that the death rate for men in social class V was twice that of men in social class I and that gap between the two was increasing, not reducing as was expected. The Acheson report stated or demonstrated the existence of health disparities and their relationship to social class, one of the report’s findings are that an overall downward trend in mortality from 1970-1990, this showed that the people that lived in the upper classes experienced a rapid mortality decline. The Acheson report also contained a thirty-nine policy suggestions in areas ranging agriculture to taxation for ameliorating health disparities. And finally the Marmot report which was written by Professor Sir Michael marmot. He was asked by the then secretary of state for health to chair an independent review to propose the most effective evidence based strategies for reducing health inequalities in England from