The Acheson Report, fully titled the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health Report, was a report published in 1998 by a United Kingdom inquiry headed by
Donald Acheson.
(Disambiguation: another report, ''"Public health in England: The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Future Development to the Public Health Function"'', which played a crucial role in the organisation of the public health function in England, is sometimes also referred to as ''the Acheson Report''.)
Content
Like earlier reports on
health disparities
Health equity arises from access to the social determinants of health, specifically from wealth, power and prestige. Individuals who have consistently been deprived of these three determinants are significantly disadvantaged from health inequiti ...
in the United Kingdom including the
Black Report The Black Report was a 1980 document published by the Department of Health and Social Security (now the Department of Health and Social Care) in the United Kingdom, which was the report of the expert committee into health inequality chaired by S ...
and the
Whitehall Study
The Whitehall Studies investigated social determinants of health, specifically the cardiovascular disease prevalence and mortality rates among British civil servants. The initial prospective cohort study, the Whitehall I Study, examined over 17,5 ...
, the Acheson report demonstrates the existence of health disparities and their relationship to social class. Among the report's findings are that despite an overall downward trend in mortality from 1970 to 1990, the upper social classes experienced a more rapid mortality decline. The report contains 39 policy suggestions in areas ranging from taxation to agriculture, for ameliorating health disparities.
[Black & al, ''Inequalities in Health'', (1990), Penguin] It had some influence on the 1998 government green paper ''
Our Healthier Nation: A Contract for Health'' which had a stated aim of reducing health inequalities;
[The Stationery Office, ''Our Healthier Nation'', (1998)] and the 1999 white paper ''
Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation''.
Inquiry members
The following were members of the inquiry:
*
Donald Acheson (chair)
*
David Barker
* Jacky Chambers
*
Hilary Graham
*
Michael Marmot
Sir Michael Gideon Marmot (born 26 February 1945) is Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. He is currently the Director of The UCL Institute of Health Equity. Marmot has led research groups on health inequa ...
*
Margaret Whitehead
Dame Margaret McRae Whitehead (born 28 September 1948) holds the W.H. Duncan chair in Public Health at the University of Liverpool. She heads the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Policy Research on the Social Determinants of H ...
Impact
Professor Clare Bambra in 2016 compared the report with the earlier
Black Report The Black Report was a 1980 document published by the Department of Health and Social Security (now the Department of Health and Social Care) in the United Kingdom, which was the report of the expert committee into health inequality chaired by S ...
and the later report by
Michael Marmot
Sir Michael Gideon Marmot (born 26 February 1945) is Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. He is currently the Director of The UCL Institute of Health Equity. Marmot has led research groups on health inequa ...
. The Acheson report was released into a more favourable climate than either. She said that at least between 1997 and 2003, health policy across the UK reflected some of the ideas set out in the Black and Acheson Reports. There was a consistent emphasis on the need to tackle the social and economic determinants of health inequalities as well as a commitment to employing cross-cutting government policies to tackle health inequality. Most importantly, by 2004, national targets to reduce health inequalities were also introduced with a focus on life expectancy and Infant Mortality Rate. A series of initiatives were introduced -
Health Action Zone
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiza ...
s, Healthy Living Centres, Health Improvement Programmes and the
New Deal for Communities New Deal for Communities was a regeneration programme led by the government of the United Kingdom for some of the England's most deprived neighbourhoods. The programme was established by Tony Blair's Labour Government and was overseen by the Neigh ...
. But, perhaps because of these initiatives, from 2004 to 2007, public health policy moved away from social and economic determinants and instead focused more on health services and lifestyle behaviours. The health inequalities targets were abandoned across the UK in 2011. The effect of policy in reducing health inequality was modest.
See also
*
Black Report The Black Report was a 1980 document published by the Department of Health and Social Security (now the Department of Health and Social Care) in the United Kingdom, which was the report of the expert committee into health inequality chaired by S ...
References
{{reflist
External links
*Official Documents Archive
Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health ReportEvaluating the Acheson reportSummary by Don Nutbeam
Public health in the United Kingdom