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ALLIANCE response to inquiry into health inequalities

  • Area of Work: The ALLIANCE
  • Type: News Item
  • Published: 30th March 2022
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The ALLIANCE has responded to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee inquiry into health inequalities.

The ALLIANCE has responded to the Health, Social Care and Sports Committee’s call for views on their inquiry into health inequalities (this link will take you away from our website).

On a broad scale, the most effective approaches to tackling health inequalities are centred on embedding equalities, human rights based, and intersectional approaches across the policy landscape, and into effective implementation of practice at all levels. The rights of marginalised groups must be at the centre of government decision making, and the voice of lived experience must be involved meaningfully, and in a way that addresses intersectional experiences.

The ALLIANCE welcomes the recent statement from the Short-Life Working Group (SLWG) on Primary Care Health Inequalities that:

“A key recommendation of the SLWG is that the voices of those individuals, groups or communities who have experienced health inequalities first-hand in their own lives should be foremost in all planning and policy developments which might have an impact on them. The principle of ‘nothing about us without us’ should hold especially true. As role modelled in the SLWG process, this should go beyond consultation to direct participation in the planning and development of policy and programmes.”[i]

As part of embedding meaningful engagement with lived experience throughout the health and social care landscape, the Scottish Government must integrate human rights into law, policy and practice at all levels to ensure they are implemented on the ground in reality.

You can read the ALLIANCE’s full response to the inquiry here.

 

[i] Scottish Government, Report of the Primary Care Health Inequalities Short-Life Working Group (March 2022), p. 16. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/report-primary-care-health-inequalities-short-life-working-group/.

Resources:

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