BACKGROUND The overall human resource shortages and the distributional inequalities in the health workforce in many developing countries are well acknowledged. However, little has been done to measure the degree of inequality systematically. Moreover, few attempts have been made to analyse the implications of using alternative measures of health care needs in the measurement of health workforce...

There is little consensus about the meaning of the terms "health disparities," "health inequalities," or "health equity." The definitions can have important practical consequences, determining the measurements that are monitored by governments and international agencies and the activities that will be supported by resources earmarked to address health disparities/inequalities or health equity. ...

INTRODUCTION Both the quantity and the distribution of health workers in a country are fundamental for assuring equitable access to health services. Using the case of Brazil, we measure changes in inequalities in the distribution of the health workforce and account for the sources of inequalities at sub-national level to identify whether policies have been effective in decreasing inequalities a...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to measure and compare the magnitude of income-related inequalities for oral and general health outcomes in Canada. METHODS Data for this study were from the 2007/09 Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS). The sample size consisted of 3,413 Canadians aged 18-79 (1,601 men and 1,812 women). Oral health indicators were the total number of decayed and missing ...

STUDY OBJECTIVE Many previous studies on socioeconomic inequalities in health have neglected the causal interdependencies between different socioeconomic indicators. This study examines the pathways between three socioeconomic determinants of ill health. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Cross sectional survey data from the Helsinki health study in 2000 and 2001 were used. Each year employees...

Poverty can breed ill-health and illhealth can keep people poor, obviously, but not enough is known about how this works specifically. Adam Wagstaff, lead economist at the World Bank, shows how the existing literature brings to light three points in particular (pp. 97–105). First, publicly financed health care fails to reach the poor in almost all developing countries. Second, inequalities in h...

Gender and health inequalities: intersections with other relevant axes of oppression T he risk of disease, disability, and mortality as well as access to health services are unfairly distributed among the population, with certain groups bearing an unequally larger burden of ill health and poorer access to care due to gender, sexual identity/orientation, ethnic background, or class. According to...

OBJECTIVES With health inequalities high on the policy agenda, this study measures oral health inequalities in the UK. METHODS We compare an objective clinical measure of oral health (number of natural teeth) with a self-reported measure of the impact of oral health (the Oral Health Impact Profile, OHIP) to establish whether the type of measure affects the scale of inequality measured. Gini c...