Events
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25 May 2021
GCPH Seminar Series 17: Lecture 3 - Prof Sir Michael Marmot
Location:
Social justice and health equity
Professor Sir Michael G. Marmot, MBBS, MPH, PhD, FRCP, FFPHM, FMedSci, FBA
Director of the Institute of Health Equity, UCL Department of Epidemiology & Public Health
We are delighted that Professor Sir Michael Marmot will join us to deliver this keynote seminar on social justice and health equity. In his talk, he provided timely and important insights and learning from his vast experience and career, and offer his thoughts on emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic and building back fairer.
Taking action to reduce health inequalities is a matter of social justice. In developing strategies for tackling health inequalities, we need to confront the social gradient in health, not just the difference between the worst off and everybody else. There is clear evidence when we look across countries that national policies make a difference and that much can be done in cities, towns and local areas. But policies and interventions must not be confined to the health care system; they need to address the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. The evidence shows that economic circumstances are important but are not the only drivers of health inequalities. Tackling the health gap will take action, based on sound evidence, across the whole of society.
Sir Michael Marmot is Professor of Epidemiology at University College London since 1985. He is the author of The Health Gap: the challenge of an unequal world (Bloomsbury: 2015), and Status Syndrome: how your place on the social gradient directly affects your health (Bloomsbury: 2004). Professor Marmot is Advisor to the WHO Director-General, on social determinants of health, in the new WHO Division of Healthier Populations; Distinguished Visiting Professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong, and co-Director of the CUHK Institute of Health Equity. He is the recipient of the WHO Global Hero Award; the Harvard Lown Professorship (2014-2017); the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health (2015); 19 honorary doctorates; and in 2000 he was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen for services to epidemiology and the understanding of health inequalities. He has led research groups on health inequalities for nearly 50 years. At the request of the British Government, he conducted the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post 2010, which published its report 'Fair Society, Healthy Lives' in February 2010. This was followed by the European Review of Social Determinants of Health and the Health Divide, for WHO EURO in 2014, and in 2020 Health Equity in England: Marmot Review 10 Years On, and Build Back Fairer: the COVID-19 Marmot Review.
If you would like to follow or contribute to the webinar on Twitter, please use the hashtag #GCPHSem17
