Report 2/2010
Priority Public Health Conditions Task Group Report by Alan Maryon-Davis, Clare Bambra, Mark Bellis, Sara Hughes, Angela Greatley
Summary

As part of the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England, aka 'Fair Society Healthy Lives': (Marmot Review), a number of expert Task Groups were set up to provide evidence and preliminary policy proposals in key areas of interest for the Review. This element of the work came under the umbrella of the 'Working Committee 1'.

Working Committee 1 (WC 1) was asked to identify new evidence in the key policy areas where action is likely to be most effective in reducing health inequalities in the short (2010–15), medium (2016–19) and long term (2020 and beyond). WC 1 assessed evidence about the efficacy of interventions to reduce health inequalities in nine policy areas:

  1. Early child development and education
  2. Employment arrangements and working conditions
  3. Social protection
  4. Built environment
  5. Sustainable development
  6. Economic analysis
  7. Delivery systems and mechanisms
  8. Priority public health conditions
  9. Social inclusion and social mobility.

This Committee made recommendations identifying potentially effective actions in reducing health inequalities for Working Committees 2 and 3 to develop. The Committee ran from January to May 2009.

The Priority Public Health Conditions Task Group consisted of Alan Maryon-Davis (Chair), Clare Bambra, Mark Bellis, Sara Hughes, Angela Greatley, Sally Greengross, Kerry Joyce, Paul Lincoln, Tim Lobstein, Chris Naylor, Rebecca Salay and Martin Wiseman.

Their  work focused on inequalities in a limited number of key ‘public health conditions’:

  • the big causes of premature death (cardiovascular
  • disease and cancer);
  • obesity;
  • and other big public health burdens' , such as risk taking behaviours in younger adults (alcohol, drugs, violence), mental ill health throughout life, and the threats to wellbeing in older people.