Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the (1) health, and (2) economic, benefits of social medicine.

Social medicine is defined as ‘a branch of science concerned with social and economic aspects of health, disease, and medical care’.

Social medicine involves taking action on the social determinants of health, which contribute to health inequalities. Health inequalities are systematic, avoidable and unjust differences in health and wellbeing between groups of people, and arise from unequal distributions of social, environmental and economic conditions, such as employment, education and housing. Public Health England (PHE) exists to protect and improve the public’s health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities.

The report Fair Society, Healthy Lives (The Marmot Review), published in early 2010, stressed that tackling health inequalities was a matter of social justice, with real economic benefits and savings and called for action to tackle the social gradient in health outcomes. A copy of Fair Society, Healthy Lives has already been placed in the Library. A further report prepared for the Marmot Review, titled Estimating the cost of health inequalities, gives more detail on the economic losses resulting from health inequalities. A copy of this report is attached. PHE has partnered with the Marmot Review team, the Institute of Health Equity, to develop products for local areas to translate the review recommendations into practical actions.