It’s always exciting to see ideas your take off, and so it's exciting to see the Institute's radical approach to health continue to gain ground in the UK and around the world.

Based on scientific research, our approach challenges a health orthodoxy that puts doctors and medical treatment at the centre of health, leaving little room for action on prevention and the wider social, economic and cultural factors, which profoundly influence health – those being 'the social determinants of health'.

We seek to shift expenditure towards prevention and believe that acting on the social determinants of health is necessary to stem the increase in demand for health services that are becoming fiscally unsustainable.

We feel it’s the right time for the social determinants of health approach to become the foundation of global and local health policy. And we have made significant in-roads as we see politicians of all the major parties in England embrace our evidence and plans for action. There is now a health inequalities duty in the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

By 2013, the approach we advocated in the 2010 Marmot Review become policy in 75 per cent of local authorities in England.

We have support across the globe. In Europe we see major uptake, including a Europe-wide review from IHE. We also see growth in the number of SDH and Health Equity networks. And, Health Equity is now embedded in European projects, as well as in projects in the the region of the Americas, where IHE work with PAHO on their Commission on Equity and Health Inequalities in the Americas.

In the UK when we monitor progress using data from ONS on the 'Marmot Indicators', our analysis receives great interest from the national press.

But, there’s a lot to do…

Our mission is nothing less than a fairer, healthier society.

It is clear to us that the ‘Marmot’ and ‘IHE’ brands are strengthening.  We have increased demand for our services from across the World.

Prof. Sir Michael Marmot was President of the World Medical Association from October 2015, and our team continue to be in demand with requests to present our work across the world.

However, whilst we attract funding from organisations for particular projects, we receive no core institutional funding to support our development and increase our reach and abilty to capitalise on our strengthening influence.

We wish to attract funding for specific areas of our work. They include:

1.  Creating capacity to advocate a Social Determinants Approach through a  dedicated marketing, fundraising and business developement professional.
2.  Support towards development and administration costs that are not funded by specific projects.

If you would like to discuss supporting our work please get in touch:

Dr Jessica Allen: jessica.allen@ucl.ac.uk