Skip to main content

Main menu

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • BJGP LIFE
  • MORE
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • eLetters
    • Alerts
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Librarian information
    • Resilience
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers

User menu

  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
British Journal of General Practice
Intended for Healthcare Professionals
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers
  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in
  • Follow bjgp on Twitter
  • Visit bjgp on Facebook
  • Blog
  • Listen to BJGP podcast
  • Subscribe BJGP on YouTube
Intended for Healthcare Professionals
British Journal of General Practice

Advanced Search

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • BJGP LIFE
  • MORE
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • eLetters
    • Alerts
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Librarian information
    • Resilience
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
Letters

Our role in addressing inequalities

Luke Allen and Catherine Dunlop
British Journal of General Practice 2017; 67 (656): 108. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp17X689485
Luke Allen
Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford. E-mail:
Roles: GP Academic Clinical Fellow
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: drlukeallen@gmail.com
Catherine Dunlop
Core Medical Trainee, Royal Marsden Hospital.
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF
Loading

All letters are subject to editing and may be shortened. General letters can be sent to bjgpdisc{at}rcgp.org.uk (please include your postal address for publication), and letters responding directly to BJGP articles can be submitted online via eLetters. We regret we cannot notify authors regarding publication. For submission instructions visit: bjgp.org/letters

It was fantastic to have an issue devoted to socioeconomic health inequalities; one of the defining issues of our time.1

As doctors we have an important role to play in ‘... improving and protecting the nation’s health and wellbeing, and improving the health of the poorest fastest’ .2 However, in general practice most of our interventions are aimed at the individual level. Compared with population-level interventions like taxing alcohol, banning trans fats from foods, enforcing smoke-free public places, and promoting healthy urban design, individual-level interventions can actually exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities.

Julian Tudor Hart’s inverse care law states that services are used most by those who need them least.3 Aside from health service utilisation, all interventions that require health literacy or healthy choices tend to widen inequalities. Living in conditions of deprivation imposes a ‘poverty tax’ that impedes people’s ability to align their short-term actions with their long-term interests.

Although it is important that we continue to quantify health inequalities, we need to be careful not to inadvertently promote them by restricting our activities to those that disproportionately benefit the well-off.

GPs have an important role to play in addressing local-level social determinants of health through commissioning, advocacy, and service provision. We look forward to reading more articles on inequalities where the focus is on addressing them at a population level in our daily practice.

  • © British Journal of General Practice 2017

REFERENCES

  1. 1.↵
    1. Jones R
    (2017) Br J Gen Pract, Dead unequal. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp17X688429.
  2. 2.↵
    1. UCL Institute of Health Equity
    (2010) Fair Society Healthy Lives (The Marmot Review), http://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/projects/fair-society-healthy-lives-the-marmot-review (accessed 10 Feb 2017).
  3. 3.↵
    1. Tudor Hart J
    (1971) The inverse care law. Lancet 1(7696):405–412.
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

In this issue

British Journal of General Practice: 67 (656)
British Journal of General Practice
Vol. 67, Issue 656
March 2017
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author
Download PDF
Article Alerts
Or,
sign in or create an account with your email address
Email Article

Thank you for recommending British Journal of General Practice.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person to whom you are recommending the page knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Our role in addressing inequalities
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from British Journal of General Practice
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from British Journal of General Practice.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Our role in addressing inequalities
Luke Allen, Catherine Dunlop
British Journal of General Practice 2017; 67 (656): 108. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp17X689485

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero

Share
Our role in addressing inequalities
Luke Allen, Catherine Dunlop
British Journal of General Practice 2017; 67 (656): 108. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp17X689485
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Jump to section

  • Top
  • Article
    • REFERENCES
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF

More in this TOC Section

Letters

  • GPs’ understanding of the wider workforce in primary care
  • 2020 vision? A retrospective study of time-bound curative claims in British and Irish newspapers
  • Verschlimmbesserung
Show more Letters

Editor’s choice

  • Wellbeing and the lingo of mental ‘health’
  • So why should I go to the RCGP Annual Conference …?
  • Consultation length
Show more Editor’s choice

Related Articles

Cited By...

Intended for Healthcare Professionals

BJGP Life

BJGP Open

 

@BJGPjournal's Likes on Twitter

 
 

British Journal of General Practice

NAVIGATE

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • All Issues
  • Online First
  • Authors & reviewers

RCGP

  • BJGP for RCGP members
  • BJGP Open
  • RCGP eLearning
  • InnovAiT Journal
  • Jobs and careers

MY ACCOUNT

  • RCGP members' login
  • Subscriber login
  • Activate subscription
  • Terms and conditions

NEWS AND UPDATES

  • About BJGP
  • Alerts
  • RSS feeds
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

AUTHORS & REVIEWERS

  • Submit an article
  • Writing for BJGP: research
  • Writing for BJGP: other sections
  • BJGP editorial process & policies
  • BJGP ethical guidelines
  • Peer review for BJGP

CUSTOMER SERVICES

  • Advertising
  • Contact subscription agent
  • Copyright
  • Librarian information

CONTRIBUTE

  • BJGP Life
  • eLetters
  • Feedback

CONTACT US

BJGP Journal Office
RCGP
30 Euston Square
London NW1 2FB
Tel: +44 (0)20 3188 7400
Email: journal@rcgp.org.uk

British Journal of General Practice is an editorially-independent publication of the Royal College of General Practitioners
© 2022 British Journal of General Practice

Print ISSN: 0960-1643
Online ISSN: 1478-5242