Sarah, race and health first became an issue in the
mid-1970s and began to take off seriously in the 1980s. There
was quite a lot of literature - including stuff on racism and
health - at that time. I wrote the first NHS race relations
strategy - for Liverpool Health Authority - in about 1986.
I'm afraid I don't have an electronic copy
You quite correctly imply that there are two parallel discourses
- a 'real' discourse on health inequality which has the aim of
eliminating it, and a governmental NHS discourse which has the
aim of making people feel that something is being done (rather
like Comic Relief has very little to do with the actual issues
it purports to aid).
As we know, despite an epidemic of inequalities policies, health
inequalities are continuing to increase. The main reason for
this is of course that inequality is an unavoidable and
fundamental principle in capitalist societies like ours and
therefore the government is not prepared to refocus upstream and
do anything meaningful about income inequalities / macroeconomic
policy, trade policy and the other real causes of inequality.
Happy to discuss further...
Best wishes, Alex
|