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Working towards health equity –Frameworks and Tools to help develop a strategic approach

July 22, 2024

Working towards health equity –Frameworks and Tools to help develop a strategic approach  

  

Working towards health equity is a challenging but crucial task. Public Health Wales is seeking to support you in this work, whatever your role, by compiling a range of national and international tools that have been developed to guide this work in different contexts.  

Health equity is achieved when everyone in a population can achieve their potential for health and well-being. Health inequities are a longstanding issue in Wales, as they are in many countries around the world. They disproportionately affect disadvantaged people, groups and communities. People living in the most deprived parts of the country or those having unmet needs or vulnerabilities, often have the worst health outcomes. The result is that health inequalities continue to ex and this in turn holds back their opportunities to live full and prosperous lives. 

For the people of Wales to be healthy, we need all the right building blocks of health and wellbeing in place. The building blocks are the positive things that everyone needs in order to be healthy, and they include things like warm homes, good jobs, enough money to pay bills, safe childhoods and connections with people in our communities. In too many parts of Wales these building blocks of health and wellbeing are not strong enough or they are missing altogether. This leads to poorer health and lives being cut short.   

Public Health Wales has published an overview of 22 health equity frameworks and tools to support governments, organisations and individuals to work towards health equity. Frameworks and tools were identified through searches of key international and national resources. This approach allowed the identification of open-access frameworks developed for public health and health equity decision-makers, which we have compiled into an accessible document. 

Given that the frameworks and tools included in this document take different approaches to working towards health equity, we have categorised them into 5 broad approaches, depending on the type of support they provide:  

  • Resource library (frameworks in this category bring health equity information and resources into a library to support targeted action, including examples from practice) 
  • Data (frameworks in this category focus on the collection and use of data to identify, describe and measure health equity issues) 
  • Action (frameworks in this category identify, order, plan, track and evaluate actions to improve health equity) 
  • Evaluate (frameworks in this category focus on the review, monitoring and/or evaluation of policies and interventions to aimed at increasing health equity) 
  • Theory (frameworks in this category seek to describe and explain health equity issues) 

The audience for each tool is listed, enabling you to identify the resource most useful to you and your organisation. We also highlight the alignment of each tool with HESRi (the WHO European Health Equity Status Report Initiative) – a mechanism to promote and support policy action and commitment for health equity and well-being in the European Region.  

For example, we have included EuroHealthNet’s Health Inequalities Portal, a detailed resource library that can be used by any stakeholder with a role in promoting health equity, and has strong links to the 5 essential conditions. We have also included Public Health Wales’ Sustainable Investment in Population Health and Well-being: Towards a Value-Based Public Health, which aims to support the real-life application of Social Value and Social Return on Investment to improve health and well-being and reduce health inequities in Wales and beyond. This document has strong links to HESRi and is tailored towards multiple audiences.  

Whatever your context and goals, there is a health equity tool available to support you, and the aim of this document is to make finding that tool simpler. Take some time to explore the tools we have collected and take your next steps towards health equity with the support of expert, evidence-based tools.  

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