areas for future policy development’ (p. 25).12
Data of this type facilitate an approach to
tackling health inequalities that focuses on the
social determinants of health, such as education,
poverty, employment and housing, alongside established
and observable individual risk factors for
disease. The recommendations made by the Acheson
Report12 reflected this approach, proposing
that action should be taken to:
improve the living standards of households in
receipt of social security benefits;
provide additional resources for schools serving
children from less-well-off groups to enhance
their educational achievement;
further invest in high-quality training for young
and long-term unemployed people;
improve the availability of social housing for the
less well off within a framework of environmental
improvement, planning and design which
takes into account social networks and access to
goods and services; and
further development of a high-quality public
transport system which is integrated with other
forms of transport and is affordable to the user.