Toward health equity

The report notes a number of barriers to action, including a lack of public knowledge of the importance of health determinants; difficulties in establishing clear, causal relationships between the determinants and health; and the complex nature of coordinating inter-sectoral action. [...] Health Inequities in British Columbia,1 Health Officers Council of BC The Health Officers Council of BC report presents a series of guiding principles and policy considerations which focus on the need to apply both universal and targeted approaches in order to improve the health of all citizens while ensuring that the most disadvantaged [...] Institutions and centres of excellence such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Collaborating Centres on Public Health, the Canadian Population Health Initiative, the Institut national de santé publique du Québec, and the Ontario Institute for Work and Health are well established and can provide knowledge development and transfer. [...] Action to reduce health inequities benefits the economy, health outcomes and the overall quality of life of Canadians in the following three ways: • Given that there is a gradient of health status across the entire range of socio-economic determinants, addressing specific health inequities will improve the health of all. [...] According to the Health Officers’ Council of BC, “Among all the policy areas for addressing the social determinants of health and reducing health inequity, none is more significant than that of income security and measures for reducing poverty in the province.”32 As for economic payback, research shows that “…people in the lowest quartile of income groups use approximately twice as much in the way