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Press release: NHS Confederation welcomes new emphasis on health inequalities

28 Feb 2001

Responding to Alan Milburn's speech at the Long Term Medical Conditions Alliance today, Chief Executive Stephen Thornton said: "This is the first time that the NHS has been set explicit targets aimed at reducing health inequalities. It will provide a welcome long term focus for all agencies within the community to work towards.

Thornton continues: "these are two realistic targets focused on the determinants of health rather than diseases. They could be a clarion call to encourage partnerships across all agencies working to achieve a common goal. In particular, it will provide an incentive for the NHS to invest in measures that impact on underlying causes of ill health rather than simply more of the same services.

On the new funding formula, Stephen Thornton said: "while we recognise that a new funding formula for the NHS is overdue, we must be careful that it does not recreate inequality in a different guise. There is a fundamental tension between the need to provide comprehensive health services to local populations and the need to deal with health inequalities. Inequalities in health and health services are both important but they are very different. Changing the formula to address health inequalities could greatly disadvantage the provision of health services. Many of the determinants of health inequality are much more likely to be influenced by national and local government expenditure decisions"

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Notes for editors

1. The NHS Confederation is uniquely placed to be the voice of NHS management, as the only membership body for all NHS organisations. Our members include more than 95% of NHS trusts and health authorities in England and Wales; primary care groups; health boards in Scotland; and health and social services trusts and boards in Northern Ireland. The new English primary care trusts have joined.
2. For instance, although Surrey has relatively low health inequalities, it has a high number of older people for which health services are required. To take funding from such an area and reallocate it to an area of significant health inequality, runs the risk of underproviding health services for vulnerable sections of the local community. Health services are only one determinant of health outcomes.
   

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