Health Equity

Health equity is the principle that everyone should have a fair and just opportunity to attain their fullest health potential, and that no one should be disadvantaged in achieving it because of social position, income, race, gender, place, or other socially determined circumstances. It differs from equality, which implies providing identical resources to all, because equity recognizes that groups with greater disadvantage may require more support. Margaret Whitehead’s influential definition distinguished inequities as differences that are unnecessary, avoidable, and unfair, and Michael Marmot’s commission for the World Health Organization argued that closing the gap within a generation requires action on the social determinants of health, including education, employment, housing, and income. Amartya Sen’s capability approach and John Rawls’s theory of justice have informed philosophical accounts of fairness in health. Sociologists such as Nancy Krieger and Bruce Link and Jo Phelan show how structural racism, class, and power shape unequal outcomes, which makes equity a matter of social structure rather than only individual behavior. Health equity remains central to policy, activism, and research on rights, justice, and the distribution of well-being.