Absolutely. The connection is profound, overwhelmingly convincing and real.
But it is therefore true (and perhaps inevitable from experience), not by
definition which would be the case if, for instance, we make poverty or
social disadvantage a health need.
The reason why this sort of argument is important is that we are deciding
all the time (globally, nationally and locally) how we allocate health
resources (skills, knowledge, money and time) upstream to tackle social and
economic disadvantage and downstream to tackle the health inequalities of
the socially and economically disadvantaged. Our objectives in process must
be specific and achievable.
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mel Bartley" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2001 12:38 AM
Subject: A priori??
> In response to Michael Hughes on:-
> > an
> > a priori connection between economic inequalities and health
inequalities.
>
> The connection is by no means 'a priori' even to left wingers. I well
> remember when the England and Wales Registrar General's
> Decennial Supplement on Occupational Mortality for 1971 came
> out. At that time I was working for a left wing community newspaper.
> The journalist who was in charge of writing a report on this document
> came to me and said "I guess this is all about the diseases of affluence
> issn't it, you know the way the idle rich get more heart disease". He was
> dumbfounded when I showed him how much higher heart disease
> mortality was in the poorer than the richer social classes. I myself,
> a few years earlier as a student, had been astonished that health
> inequality existed (despite my left wing beliefs, I had never imagined
> that poorer people actually lived shorter lives than the rich until shown
> the figures in Government reports).
>
> Mel B
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