Research centre seeks to reduce health inequalities

The University of Essex is part of a new £9m research centre focused on tackling and reducing health inequalities in the UK.

The ESRC Centre for Lifecourse Health Equity (Equalise) is led from University College London and supported by an outstanding multi-disciplinary team of researchers and associates from across the University of Essex; City St George’s, University of London; the University of Glasgow; theUniversity of Strathclyde; and Toulouse III Paul Sabatier in France. 

Dr Emily T Murray, Director of the Centre for Coastal Communities at the University of Essex, is co-leading the place-based inequalities theme within the new Centre. She said: “It is an honour to join this amazing team of academics and partners to tackle the growing issue of health inequity. This award is fantastic news, ensuring that we can co-create evidence-based solutions to long-standing geographic inequalities within the UK.”

The Centre is also working in partnership with a team of experts in local and national government and a wide range of health equity focused advocacy and voluntary groups including the Health Foundation, Race Equality Foundation, Carers Trust, Eurocarers, City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, Disability Rights UK, Early Education and Childcare Coalition, National Literacy Trust, Women’s Budget Group, The Poverty Alliance, Skills and Education Group, and Voluntary Health Scotland. 

Professor Yvonne Kelly, Director  of the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies (ICLS), and co-Director of the new Centre, said the idea for the new programme of work was forged from more than 15 years of highly impactful research at ICLS, that had already played a major role in identifying and addressing health inequalities.

She added it was now time to find solutions to these clearly identified and well understood inequalities: “Despite the UK leading the way in health inequalities research, the gaps between rich and poor have widened, gains in life expectancy have stalled and poor health restricts people’s ability to participate actively and equally in society. The ESRC Centre for Lifecourse Health Equity (Equalise) seeks to change that by moving away from identifying the issues to actively addressing them. This will be done by undertaking collaborative research with our partners that generates actionable insights to redress health inequalities.”

The Centre’s research will have five key themes:

• Reducing inequalities in learning and development opportunities
• Work and health over the lifecourse
• Care, health and wellbeing over the lifecourse
• Place-based inequalities
• Research and policy synthesis

The Centre is staffed by leading researchers in their field, among them Professor Sir Michael Marmot, a long-term champion and advocate of an evidence-led approach to health equity. He said: “A cost-of-living crisis, a pandemic, and a decade of austerity have led to rising levels of ill-health and widening health inequalities. This new Centre is uniquely placed to coproduce a highly ambitious programme of research that can identify key points where interventions can work. It is time for health equity to become the social norm. This in turn will foster a society and an economy that are more robust to global threats and crises.”

The new Centre, which is funded by the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council, starts its five-year research programme with immediate effect.