People without a permanent address or valid ID are being unlawfully refused registration at GP practices. In this blog, GP and HEEC researcher Fred Barker and continuous cruiser Joy Anderson highlight the issue through Joy’s own experience of struggling to access primary care.
Returning to work can be a deeply unequal experience for disabled people, shaped not only by health needs but by workplace assumptions, discrimination and inflexible systems. This blog reflects on the pressure to work, the impact of ableism, and why valuing people beyond economic productivity is essential.
In the third and final blog of our three-part series, we explore how central digital and data are to the ambitions of the 10 Year Health Plan for England — and what that means for health inequalities. From the NHS App as the new “front door” to more systematic use of social risk data and patient-reported measures, we examine where the choices made now will determine whether digital transformation narrows gaps or widens them.
As the government promises to align NHS funding more closely with health need, contracts and payment rules are moving to the centre of the inequalities debate. In the second blog of our three-part series, we examine whether the 10 Year Health Plan’s proposed funding reforms — from revisiting the Carr-Hill formula to introducing capitation and new neighbourhood contracts — can meaningfully redirect resources towards the communities that need them most.
Health inequity is not the product of individual behaviour, but of policy design. Drawing on a comprehensive synthesis of recent evidence, this blog examines why public policies that reshape social and material conditions are more likely to reduce health inequities than those that rely heavily on individual agency, and how a policy-focused framework can help anticipate these effects.
As the NHS shifts care closer to home, neighbourhood health is being positioned as a key lever for reducing inequalities. But will it deliver? In the first blog of our three-part series, we explore what the evidence says about co-located services, Integrated Neighbourhood Teams and community health workers — and what it will take for this agenda to genuinely narrow the gap.
Introducing two new practical resources to explain how artificial intelligence can support evidence synthesis
In this guest blog, Professor Andrea Williamson reflects on her previous research into repeated missed healthcare appointments, which links high non-attendance to poorer health outcomes and social disadvantage. Building on this work, she introduces a new approach to appointment letters aimed at better supporting patients and improving engagement with services.
