Health Inequalities - a Joint Paper from the IMO & BMA(NI)
March 2012
Doctors representing the medical profession across the island of Ireland are calling on their governments, north and south, to lead the way in vigorously tackling health inequalities.
In this document “Health Inequalities – The Medical Profession Highlight Their Concerns” the IMO and the BMA (NI) call for:
• Governments to ensure health inequalities are addressed in a holistic manner.
• Government policies to be “health proofed” through the use of Health Impact Assessments to ensure that policies potentially deleterious to health are engineered in such a way to have the maximal health benefit for as large a proportion of the population as possible.
• Governments to recognize that reducing health inequalities through reduction in societal inequalities is the best long-term investment that any Government can make on behalf of its citizens
• Recognise the importance of as large a proportion of the population as possible having rewarding, productive and secure employment, and urge their respective Governments to adopt policies that encourage growth.