Tackling inequalities in heart health and care: our policy initiatives
Discover what we're doing to address health inequalities and achieve better outcomes for everyone.
What are health inequalities?
Health inequalities are disparities in health status, healthcare, and health-related risks between different population groups that are unfair and avoidable. They are rooted in:
- current and historic disparities in medical research
- differential exposure to health-damaging environments and risks
- variation in access to, and quality of, healthcare.
Health inequalities are not inevitable and the gaps are not fixed.
We believe that concerted and systematic action is needed across multiple fronts to address the causes of health inequalities.
Understanding the barriers to heart health
Heart and circulatory diseases are a major driver of health inequalities in the UK. They are a major health burden but they can often be prevented. Cardiovascular health is impacted by a range of modifiable factors, including:
- access to health and care services
- the social and economic conditions in which people live.
Certain UK populations are more at risk of developing heart and circulatory diseases. Gender, age, ethnicity, and social deprivation all impact our chance of developing risk factors for heart disease, such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
Our mission to tackle inequalities
Action to reduce inequalities lies at the heart of the BHF’s mission and is an important part of our strategy to 2030. We want longer, better lives for everyone, regardless of their background.
Our ‘Bridging Hearts’ report summarises what we know about cardiovascular inequalities across the UK through 3 lenses: deprivation, sex and ethnicity. It also makes recommendations on what governments and health systems across the UK can do to tackle these inequalities in cardiovascular health and care.
We are currently developing a comprehensive programme of work to that will focus on tackling inequalities in heart and circulatory disease so we can beat heartbreak forever, for everyone.
Women and heart disease
Women are more than twice as likely to die of coronary heart disease than breast cancer in the UK, but awareness of the disease amongst women is low.
In our briefing, Bias and Biology, we highlighted how stark inequalities in awareness, diagnosis and treatment of heart attacks are needlessly killing women in the UK. Following this report, we are now working to understand the experience of women across other heart and circulatory diseases, with the aim of developing recommendations to health and care systems to improve care and outcomes for women.