Health inequalities

Health inequalities are systemic and avoidable disparities in health, life expectancy and access to care. They are determined by factors such as employment, ethnicity, locality, gender, disability and housing.

Some groups in society – particularly the socially excluded, those living in areas of high deprivation, and those from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities – can experience extreme differences, especially people who are in more than one of these seldom listened-to groups.

Through innovation and improvements to health systems, treatment pathways and care environments, we are determined to widen access to care and create health equity across the population.

We are aligned with the national NHS initiative Core20PLUS5 and many of our programmes concentrate on this initiative’s key areas of focus, such as maternity, mental illness, and respiratory disease.

While health inequalities are a golden thread that weaves through all our work, we also partner in running a specific initiative, InHIP, focused solely on this issue.

InHIP is run in collaboration with the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC), in partnership with integrated care systems (ICSs) and focuses on scaling medical technologies to underserved populations as described in the Core20PLUS5 initiative.

If you or your organisation already have an innovation that works to tackle health inequalities, or you want information on how to make your innovation address these issues, we can support you.