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Work and Projects

The group acts as a resource for the rest of the College on health inequalities issues.  It has contributed to College comment on a number of government White Papers, as well as providing evidence to the Acheson Inquiry into Inequalities in Health. The group also contributed to the review of the QOF and to the 2005 White Paper.

The group has mounted a series of conferences and seminars on health inequalities themes, beginning in June 1999 with a conference on health issues and housing, held jointly with the Chartered Institute of Housing. The two groups share a common concern for issues of social exclusion and the health impact of poverty and the conference generated a lively exchange of ideas between health professionals and housing teams.

Since March 2002, the group has identified an annual theme for its work, which culminates each spring in a conference on the topic. The Conference in 2002 was in Leeds on the topic Housing, Health and Homelessness: The Challenge to Primary Care, supported by a generous grant from Leeds Health Authority. The conference brought health professionals together with people working in housing and social services and staff and clients from voluntary agencies working with homeless people.

Also in 2002, the group held a conference jointly with the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE).  The outcome of this conference was the RCGP Position Statement - Mental Health and Primary Care.

The following year, the conference was held in Glasgow, entitled Hard Lives: Improving the Health of People with Multiple problems and in March 2004, in Birmingham, the theme was Mental Health Inequalities.

The group was occupied in 2005 with the development of a report from its March conference on health inequalities and the new GMS contract, and with preparing submissions to the review of the QOF.  These centred on the particular value to marginalised and excluded populations of the personal doctor and their role as advocates.  The QOF submissions drew heavily on the group's work on multiple morbidity and mental health inequalities.

The group’s next conference, held on the 5^th February 2009, was to launch the booklet Addressing Health Inequalities: A guide for general practitioners, which demonstrates how GPs can positively influence the health inequalities amongst their local population as practitioners, commissioners and community leaders. Topics discussed in the conference included practice-based commissioning for health inequalities, health inequalities in the undergraduate curriculum and how the primary care workforce can be shaped to tackle health inequalities more effectively.   A further conference titled Patients, Profits and Primary Care: Health Inequalities, Ethics and Privatisation was held on the 15th July 2009.  The purpose of this conference was to explore the impact of the privatisation of primary care on health inequalities. Topics included refugee primary care and privatisation, ethical dilemmas in privatisation and social enterprise as a community-based alternative to Alternative Provider Medical Services (APMS).  The group were particularly pleased that Professor Sir Michael Marmot, Chair of the Commission of Social Determinants of Health, was able to deliver a talk on international and national perspectives on primary care, health inequalities and commercialisation.

The main output of each of these events has been the development of a consensus statement on the annual theme.  These have provided an agenda for closer working between the different sectors involved and have influenced the College’s policy in specific areas. By bringing together a large multi-disciplinary group and providing a structure in which to elicit and record their ideas for action, as the end-point of a year of writing and campaigning, the group summarises its thinking about the issue and also suggests areas for further activity, which can be taken up by other agencies, primarily Primary Care Organisations.  The consensus statements developed since 2002 have all been accepted by the College Council.

In addition to their conference activities, 2009 will see the group publish an RCGP textbook on health inequalities.  It is intended that the textbook will correspond with existing RCGP teaching domains and complement other RCGP teaching materials.  The group’s Chair, Dr Angela Jones, is also actively involved in the Academy of Medical Royal College’s Health Inequalities Forum (AHIF) and hopes to use this as an additional platform to raise health inequalities issues.  The group has recently engaged with the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England Post 2010 (Marmot Review), and Dr Angela Jones has produced a paper for the Review Team on behalf of the RCGP on the role of primary care in the reduction of health inequalities.

This year’s Health Inequalities Conference, to be held at the Liverpool Medical Institution on 26^th and 27^th April 2010, is on the theme of ‘Health Inequalities in the Medical Undergraduate Curriculum'.

View the event flier for more information