Tackling health inequalities: how to save the NHS

摘要

In the coffee room at my GP surgery is a bookcase. Like most furniture of its type it is little used these days because relevant links and resources are only a click away. A few weeks ago I pulled from it a copy of Sir Douglas Black’s groundbreaking 1980 report on inequalities in health, with the strapline: ‘the most important single document on health since the war’ ( Labour Weekly ).1This heavily referenced work by one of the UK’s top scientists made recommendations to improve the health of the nation. An initial anti-poverty strategy was identified because this was the central issue recognised as being at …