Black Report
The Black Report was a 1980 document published by the
Commissioning
The Black report was commissioned in March 1977 by David Ennals, Labour Secretary of State, following publication of a two-page article by Richard G. Wilkinson in New Society, on 16 December 1976, entitled Dear David Ennals. The report was nearly ready for publication in early 1979.
In the
The report had a huge impact on political thought in the United Kingdom and overseas. It led to an assessment by the Office for Economic Co-Operation and Development and the World Health Organization of health inequalities in 13 countries.[2]
Impact
Professor Clare Bambra in 2016 compared the report with the later Acheson Report and the subsequent report by Michael Marmot. The Acheson report was released into a more favourable climate than either. She said that at least between 1997 and 2003, health policy across the UK reflected some of the ideas set out in the Black and Acheson Reports. There was a consistent emphasis on the need to tackle the social and economic determinants of health inequalities as well as a commitment to employing cross-cutting government policies to tackle health inequality. Most importantly, by 2004, national targets to reduce health inequalities were also introduced with a focus on life expectancy and Infant Mortality Rate. A series of initiatives were introduced - Health Action Zones, Healthy Living Centres, Health Improvement Programmes and the New Deal for Communities. But, perhaps because of these initiatives, from 2004 to 2007, public health policy moved away from social and economic determinants and instead focused more on health services and lifestyle behaviours. The health inequalities targets were abandoned across the UK in 2011. The effect of policy in reducing health inequality was modest.[3]
Related publications
Penguin Books published a shortened version of the Black Report in 1982, making it widely available [4]
The Whitehall Report published in 1987 [5] came to the same conclusions as the Black report, as did the Acheson Report later in 1998, and the Marmot Review[6] in 2010.
References
- ^ Inequalities in Health. London: DHSS. August 1980. Retrieved 30 December 2016.
- ^ BMJ Obituary of Sir Douglas Black:"Sir Douglas Black: Professor of medicine whose famous report on inequality and health fell foul of the Thatcher government".
- ISBN 9781447330356. Retrieved 30 December 2016.
- ISBN 0-14-022420-3
- PMID 3555518.
- ^ Michael Marmot (February 2010). "Strategic review of health inequalities in England post 2010 (Marmot Review)". Retrieved 2010-02-15.