It is a commonplace in recent public health discussions that we should give some priority in our policies to reducing health inequities between social groups. This theme has become important in the United States, where race “disparities” (a euphemism for “inequities”) are significant and generally thought to be unjust (IOM 2002). It is a more developed feature of public policy in Europe, where a Health For All strategy has evolved (WHO Europe 1999). In the United Kingdom, health inequalities by class, and more recently by ethnicity, have been the subject of major reports leading to policy initiatives both within the health sector and across sectors aimed at narrowing the health gap (Department of Health 1999, 2003; Secretary of State 1999: 5, cited in Graham 2004a, b; Graham and Kelly 2004). These initiatives address the social determinants of health and the ways inequalities in their distribution produce health inequalities across social groups. In Sweden, special attention has been paid to limiting social inequality as a way of reducing health inequalities (Ostlin and Diderichsen 2001). In Europe more generally, reducing health disparities has emerged as a major policy theme (WHO Europe 2002). Globally, WHO and some of its regional organizations have made equity in health central to its agenda.

In Chapter 3, I argued that a health inequality between social groups is unjust when it results from an unjust distribution of the socially controllable factors affecting population health.