Health Inequalities Tender

Link:

Background:

This work is a response to the Communication from the Commission in 2009 “Solidarity in Health: Reducing Health Inequalities in the EU”. This Communication recognised that while EU citizens live, on average, longer and healthier lives than previous generations, the EU is faced with an important challenge: the large gaps in health which exist between and within EU Member States.

The Communication launched the debate to define potential EU-level measures to support actions by Member States and other actors to address health inequalities. In order to be able to do so, there is a need to:

Update the work that has been done previously to investigate the scale of inequalities between and within countries across the EU, as much of the data used in previous reports is now out of date.
Review routine data collections across the European Union as some countries are not in a position for the full impact of health inequalities to be assessed.
Review and assess current action being taken to reduce health inequalities and to propose more effective policy, action, interventions and delivery systems or to advocate greater scale and intensity of activity.

Aims & Objectives:

The main objective of this call for tender is to produce a comprehensive report on health inequalities, the actions being taken to combat them in the EU, and proposals for strengthening effective action across Europe.

Specifically, the objectives of the work are:

To document and review the health inequalities situation in the EU including analysis of recent trends.
To document and review the policy response to health inequalities at EU, national and, where relevant, sub-national levels.
To provide an analysis and commentary including implications and suggestions for possible future actions.

Activities:

The final report, expected to be published in May 2012, will be in three parts:

1) Health Inequalities Situation in the EU

A statistical analysis with a narrative.

2) Policy response to health inequalities

Assessment of the policy response at EU, national and sub-national levels.

3) Commentary and recommendations

Proposals on the actions that should be taken at EU, national and sub-national levels.

EuroHealthNet is involved in the second and third objectives and parts of the report.

The Consortium that will carry out this work comprises UCL, the Health Action Partnership International (HAPI), EuroHealthNet, and the Association of Public Health Observatories. The Consortium is led by Professor Sir Michael Marmot's team at University College London.

The Consortium will draw on the expertise of contractors from across Europe. A high level steering group will be convened to advise the Consortium, this will be composed of independent experts from across Europe and senior scientists.

Other Partners involved:

Partners in Consortium: