Partners from six European countries and three UK research centres came to Liverpool for two days of review and planning at the end of the first year of DEMETRIQ – Developing methodologies to reduce inequalities in the determinants of health – a €4million EU Framework 7 project.
Although average levels of health in EU countries have continued to improve, substantial differences remain not only between countries but also between advantaged and disadvantaged sections of the population within each country.
These inequalities in health are a major challenge to public health in Europe. The DEMETRIQ project brings together an international team of expert researchers to examine how health inequalities are perpetuated and how they can be reduced.
Professor Margaret Whitehead, from the Department of Public Health and Policy and Co-coordinator of DEMETRIQ explained, “A key challenge is to identify policies that can reduce inequalities and to do this we need to develop robust research methods to assess policy impact. We are developing and applying innovative methods to evaluate policies across such diverse fields as unemployment, poverty reduction, tobacco and alcohol control and access to education and preventive health care. An essential part of our work will be ensuring that everything we learn is made accessible to policymakers to help them address these persistent and unjust inequalities in health”.
Further information about DEMETRIQ can be found here: http://www.demetriq.eu/
