Victorian Health Inequalities Network
The social conditions in which people live and work powerfully influence their chances to be healthy. Indeed factors such as poverty, social exclusion and discrimination, poor housing, unhealthy early childhood conditions, and low occupational status, are important determinants of most diseases, deaths and health inequalities between and within countries.
World Health Organisation Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, Geneva 2004
Ideally, in every region and in every country, all people should be able to attain their full health potential. However, differences in health status have been observed between different groups within the same country, particularly different socioeconomic groups (as measured by income, education and occupation), different ethnic groups, and people living in different locations. These systematic differences in health are known as inequalities in health, as they are not the result of individual genetics, biology and lifestyle choices, but are produced by the structures that shape the society in which an individual lives and works.
For the past few decades, researchers and governments across the globe have become aware of the costs of increasing inequalities in health – costs to the individual, to their families and to the community as a whole.
In 2006, VCOSS partnered with the Department of Health Science at Monash University in an exciting new project which aims to reduce health inequalities in Victoria. With financial support from VicHealth, this project will create opportunities for extensive discussions and new joint actions between academics and non-government organisations, to address this growing problem. The recently established Victorian Health Inequalities Network, that will guide this project, will soon have its own website where further information about health inequalities, including the project outcomes, will be posted.
During 2007 the Network will host four roundtable discussions and a state-wide forum to bring together for the first time, experts in the field of health inequalities and state government policy makers, who will brainstorm innovative solutions that can be implemented in Victoria.
VicHealth has identified that the most significant and persistent inequalities in health In Victoria can be seen when comparing the health of people with differences in education levels, occupations, income, employment, geographic locations and who are from different ethnic or Indigenous backgrounds, with different physical or mental abilities.
In Europe, intensive work has been undertaken by all member states of the European Union to develop effective strategies for tackling health inequalities. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has established a Commission on the Social Determinants of Health to further examine the many factors that determine a person’s health, particularly government policies and programs which often result in unfair and avoidable impacts on the health of certain sections of the population.