Our mission
The Health Equality Foundation exists to close the access in health outcomes that persist across gender, socioeconomic background and ethnicity.
Our mission
The Health Equality Foundation exists to close the gaps in health access that persist across gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic background by building the evidence for healthcare designed around need, not norms.
What we do
We work across four research areas, each targeting a different level at which assumptions displace genuine need.
Service design: Building healthcare infrastructure around the communities with greatest need.
Clinical practice: Addressing the biases embedded in clinical training and professional culture that produce unequal care and experiences even within well-designed services.
Health research: Closing the gaps in knowledge about under-researched conditions and communities and making the case for research funding that reflects genuine need rather than established priorities.
Community voice: Centring the experiences of those most affected, including through large-scale national surveys and qualitative research that puts women's and communities' voices at the heart of the evidence base.
How we create change
Every piece of work we publish names the norms at work, identifies who bears the cost, and sets out the concrete changes in policy, commissioning or practice that the evidence demands. We develop detailed recommendations addressed to the institutions and people responsible for change, including government, NHS England and other stakeholders, and we campaign actively for their implementation. We do not stop at publication.
What we are working towards
We are working towards a health system in which outcomes are determined by what people need and nothing else. That means services designed around the communities they serve, not around a default patient who represents too few of us. It means clinicians equipped to treat everyone equitably. It means research that takes seriously the conditions and communities that have been ignored for too long. And it means the people most affected by health inequality having a genuine voice in how the system is designed and transformed.
The gaps we are working to close are not inevitable. They are the product of norms that can be named, challenged and changed. That is what we are here to do.