Addressing health inequalities in the United Kingdom: a case study*A previous draft of this paper was presented at a workshop entitled ‘Health Equity Research: Beyond the Sound of One Hand Clapping’, held at the Rockefeller Conference Center, ...

Health inequalities research has a long history in the United Kingdom, and the development of government policies that are intended to explicitly address the existing health inequalities has been gathering pace since the Labour Party returned to power in 1997. In this paper, using the influential Acheson Report as a reference point, one of us (D.N.) describes how health inequalities policies have been developed, and the other (A.O.) assesses how, ideally, such policies ought to be developed. Although progress in the development of health inequalities policies has been made, the policies, and the evidence that has informed them, have been less than ideal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]