Webinar – Policy Approaches to Reducing Health Inequalities

This webinar was potentially of interest to public health actors whose work touches on questions of health inequalities and health equity as well as those interested in policy approaches in public health. It was presented on March 14, 2017.

The webinar was intended to enable public health actors to more easily distinguish between the most widespread policy approaches that have been proposed to reduce health inequalities. These approaches are: political economy, macro social policies, intersectionality, life course, settings approach, approaches that aim at living conditions, those that target communities, and approaches aimed at individuals.

We clarified how these different approaches are grounded theoretically, how they affect inequalities differently, and how adopting one or the other can impact attempts to reduce health inequalities.

By the end of the webinar, participants were be able to:

• Differentiate between eight different policy approaches to reducing health inequalities.
• Classify each approach as acting on either the determinants of health or the determinants of health inequalities.
• Illustrate how adopting one or another of the policy approaches will affect the potential reduction of health inequalities differently.

In preparation for the webinar, participants were invited to read the document Policy Approaches to Reducing Health Inequalities.

This webinar was part of the Knowledge Translation in Public Health Medicine series offered by the National Collaborating Centres for Public Health in partnership with the Public Health Physicians of Canada.

Understanding policy approaches to reducing health inequalities can be useful for advancing public health physicians’ competencies in these domains:

• Policy, planning & program development
• Communication, collaboration & advocacy for the public’s health
• Leadership and management