Taking a Cooperative approach to tackling health inequalities

About the project

‘Inequalities are a matter of life and death, of health and sickness, of well-being and misery. The fact that in England today people in different social circumstances experience avoidable differences in health, well-being and length of life is, quite simply, unfair’  – Professor Michael Marmot

More than 10 years on from the landmark Marmot Review, the Health Foundation has found that for many groups in England, health and life expectancy are deteriorating, and there are clear systematic inequalities in the groups for whom this is happening. Broadly speaking, poorer communities, women and those living in the North have experienced little or no improvement since 2010. There has been a slowdown in life expectancy of a duration not witnessed in England for 120 years, and that has not been seen to the same extent across the rest of Europe or in most other OECD countries, and health has deteriorated for the population as a whole.  In Westminster, we have an 18-year life expectancy gap between our wealthiest and poorest communities. 

Health inequality takes an unnecessary and unjust toll on the health and length of life of much of the population, particularly those who are more deprived, as we have described. There is a strong moral case for intervening, and this is reason enough to act, but health inequalities are also financially costly.   There is also a strong financial case: the total cost associated nationally with inequality was £12.52 billion.

Many councils have been innovating community-based approaches to the social determinants of health and have made significant system-wide changes to enable this to happen. This project is focused on building on this learning across CCIN to identify how cooperative principles can catalyse system change and build community resources to provide a radical new model of community partnership to tackle the national injustice of health inequalities.