Mariona Pons-Vigués, Èlia Diez, Joana Morrison, Sergio Salas-Nicás, Rasmus Hoffmann, Bo Burstrom, Jitse P van Dijk and Carme Borrell
BMC Public Health 2014, 14:198
Published on: 24 February 2014
Abstract / Resumen:
Background:
Health inequalities can be tackled with appropriate health and social policies, involving all community groups and governments, from local to global. The objective of this study was to carry out a scoping review on social and health policies or interventions to tackle health inequalities in European cities published in scientific journals. Methods: Scoping review. The search was done in “PubMed” and the “Sociological Abstracts” database and was limited to articles published between 1995 and 2011. The inclusion criteria were: interventions had to take place in European cities and they had to state the reduction of health inequalities among their objectives. Results: A total of 54 papers were included, of which 35.2% used an experimental design, and 74.1% were carried out in the United Kingdom. The whole city was the setting in 27.8% of them and 44.4% were based on promoting healthy behaviours. Adults and children were the most frequent target population and half of the interventions had a universal approach and the other half a selective one. Half of the interventions were evaluated and showed positive results. Conclusions: Although health behaviours are not the main determinants of health inequalities, the majority of the selected documents were based on evaluations of interventions focusing on them.
Keywords / Palabras clave: Social Determinants of Health; Inequalities; Health Systems;
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