More about us

The Cochrane Health Equity Field is co-registered with the Campbell Collaboration as the Campbell Equity Methods Group.  Both entities were registered on the 27th of June, 2005.

Our aim is to encourage authors of Campbell and Cochrane reviews to include explicit descriptions of the effect of the interventions not only on the whole population but to describe their effect upon the disadvantaged and/or their ability to reduce socioeconomic inequalities in health and to promote their use to the wider community.  Ultimately, this will help build the evidence base on such interventions and increase our capacity to act on the health gap between rich and poor.

Although there is controversy over the definition, one useful definition of health inequalities is, "the virtually universal phenomenon of variation in health indicators ... associated with socioeconomic status" (Last 1995); inequalities may also be seen between genders or geographic groups, for example.  Health inequalities require three components for calculation: a valid measure of health status, a measure of social position or status, and a statistical method for summarizing the magnitude of the health differences between people in different social positions. Health inequities "are unfair and remediable inequalities" (International Society for Equity in Health 2005).