Why more equal societies almost always do better
Why more equal societies almost always do better
Richard Wilkinson, Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School and Honorary Professor at University College London.
{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wilkinson_%28public_health%29}
Kate Pickett, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York and a National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist.
{https://hsciweb.york.ac.uk/research/public/Staff.aspx?ID=1197}
When:
Tuesday, 19th January 2010, at 3:00- 5:00 pm Washington DC time
Please check the local time in your own town: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
Where: in front of your personal or work computer anywhere in the world or at:
PAHO HQ Room 1017
525 23Rd St. NW Washington DC 20037
Link to participants – Via Internet
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=1110&password=M.A4FA308B5F1FA6CD60DB62C0137303
We will broadcast this session in English via the Elluminate Live!® software using integrated VoIP for the audio component
Please connect a few minutes before 3 pm Washington DC time. You must have a headset or speaker and microphone
The event is free and open to interested people. You may attend virtually from your personal or work computer anywhere in the world. In addition to watching live presentations, you will have the option to ask questions and provide comments.
This conference will enable the sharing of good practices and lessons learned.
Welcome
3:00 – 3:20pm
* Juan Manuel Sotelo, Manager, External Relations, Resource Mobilization, and Partnerships PAHO/WHO
* Jarbas Barbosa, Manager, Health Surveillance and Disease Prevention and Control (HSD) PAHO/WHO
* Theresa Bernardo, Manager, Knowledge Management and Communications (KMC) PAHO/WHO
Presenters
3:20 – 4:00pm
Why more equal societies almost always do better
Where in the developed world do people live the longest? Where do people born at the bottom of the economic ladder have the best shot at climbing up?
In which nations do children do best in school? Which countries send the most people to prison? Have the teenage pregnancies? Suffer the most homicides?
The answers matter and are indicative of a society’s overall health and the quality of life for its citizens.
That is the contention of eminent British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.
Presenters
Richard Wilkinson has played a formative role in international research and his work has been published in 10 languages. He studied economic history at the London School of Economics before training in epidemiology and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School and Honorary Professor at University College London.
Kate Pickett, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York and a National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist. She studied physical anthropology at Cambridge, nutritional sciences at Cornell and epidemiology at Berkeley before spending four years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago.
4:00 – 5:00pm
Q&A from Participants
Contact Information:
E-mail: Ruglucia@paho.org
Pan American Health Organization PAHO/WHO – Washington D.C.
- – - – Further reading – - -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/12/equality-british-society
The theory of everything
These two British academics argue that almost every social problem, from crime to obesity, stems from one root cause: inequality. John Crace meets the authors of what might be the most important book of the year
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Report
Black Report
The Black report was a 1980 document published [1] by the Department of Health and Social Security (now the Department of Health) in the United Kingdom, which was the report of the expert committee into health inequality chaired by Sir Douglas Black. It was demonstrated that although overall health had improved since the introduction of the welfare state, there were widespread health inequalities. It also found that the main cause of these inequalities was economic inequality. The report showed that the death rate for men in social class V was twice that for men in social class I and that gap between the two was increasing not reducing as was expected.
The Black report was commissioned in March 1977 by David Ennals, Labour Secretary of State, following publication of a two-page article by Richard Wilkinson in New Society, on 16 December 1976, entitled ‘Dear David Ennals’. The report was nearly ready for publication in early 1979.
However, in the General Election on 3 May 1979, the Conservatives were elected. The Black Report was not issued until 1980 by the Conservative Government. The Black report was published on August Bank Holiday with only 260 copies made available on the day for the media. However, the report had a huge impact on political thought in the United Kingdom and overseas. It led to an assessment by the Office for Economic Co-Operation and Development and the World Health Organization of health inequalities in 13 countries -though not on UK government policy [2].
Penguin Books published a shortened version of the Report in 1982, making it widely available [3]
The Whitehead Report published in 1987 came to the same conclusions as the Black report, as did the Acheson Report later in 1998.
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http://www.sochealth.co.uk/Black/black.htm
The Black Report 1980
The publication of the Black Report over the Bank Holiday Weekend of 1980 by the Thatcher Government signalled the end of the hopes of improvement in public health for twenty years. It was clear that the Government would have preferred to suppress the whole thing, and it is greatly to the authors’ credit that this did not happen. However you do not need to read very much to see why the Conservatives wanted to suppress it. Redistribution, increased public expenditure and taxation and unashamed socialism are flaunted on almost every page.