Health Inequalities
Context
People in the least well-off areas of the UK live shorter lives than their peers in the most affluent areas, with a gap that can exceed 10 years. These gaps result from inequalities in the building blocks of health - such as education, working and living conditions - and have a cumulative effect over the course of people’s lives.
Despite a universal healthcare system that is free at the point of use, inequalities also persist in access, diagnosis, and treatment. Overlapping with inequalities in resources, skills, and social support, they lead to a disproportionate burden on the health of disadvantaged individuals and groups.
This excess in illness, apart from devastating people’s lives, has an immense cost for the NHS. Inequalities in hospital admissions alone have an estimated cost of £4.8 billion year – almost a fifth of the overall NHS hospital budget.
Health inequalities do not solely exist across income groups and social class, neither do they concern only disadvantaged groups. People’s experience, social position and health is simultaneously shaped by the combination of multiple dimensions including, though not exclusively, their ethnicity, race, age, gender, sexuality, and disability.
Therefore, while people who experience multiple vulnerabilities (e.g., rough sleepers, street-based sex workers, refugees, and gypsy, Roma, traveller communities) are those who also experience some of the worst health outcomes in society, health inequalities affect everyone according to their position within the multiple and intersecting social hierarchies beyond the socio-economic.