Despite progress in health outcomes, all countries are faced with persistent health differences amongst socioeconomic groups. It has been reported that people have a life expectancy varying between 5 and 10 years, sometimes 15 years, depending on their socioeconomic positions.
Health inequalities are thus a major concern for both scientists and policymakers. In spite of research efforts, the causal pathways that link socioeconomic conditions with health inequalities are still under debate among scientists. This creates uncertainty about how to effectively reduce health inequalities through policy interventions.
FEAM, together with the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) is working on a project aimed at reviewing existing research and striking a balance between the findings of different disciplines. A multi-disciplinary scientific committee comprising experts of FEAM and ALLEA academies is overseeing this project.
The project started in 2018 with a discussion paper prepared by KNAW that served as background to the international symposium on health inequalities (24 May 2018). Key researchers from different backgrounds discussed health inequalities with a view to contributing to the best scientific evidence available to inform public policy.
In 2019, the scientific committee on Health Inequalities will organise a series of meetings to:
Health Inequalities, ALLEA-FEAM Symposium Report, 2018
“Health Inequalities Research: New Methods, Better Insights?”, ALLEA-FEAM Report, 2021
