Build back fairer: achieving health equity in the Eastern Mediterranean region of WHO

Conflict and COVID-19 both expose and amplify existing inequities in society. Inequities in health can be linked to poverty and income inequality; inequities in social conditions through the life course; gender inequities; problems related to extremes of weather, made worse by climate change; and land degradation with impacts on supplies of food and water. Against this background, the Commission on Social Determinants of Health in the Eastern Mediterranean was charged with assembling the evidence on social determinants of health and on inequities in health within and between countries and to make recommendations. The Commission was convened in 2019 by the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean in collaboration with the Institute of Health Equity at University College London and the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, Geneva. The Commission's report Build Back Fairer: Achieving Health Equity in the Eastern Mediterranean Region was published on March 31, 2021. The Build Back Fairer title was chosen as a deliberate echo of a 2020 report on COVID-19 and socioeconomic and health inequalities in England. Emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, with its large impacts on society, is an opportunity to ask how, based on the best evidence, societies and health systems can be rebuilt in a way that benefits all people. Doing so will be a major step to building greater health equity.

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Marmot, M., A. Al-Mandhari, A. Ghaffar, M. El-Adawy, R. Hajjeh, W. Khan, J. Allen (2020) Build back fairer: achieving health equity in the Eastern Mediterranean region of WHO. The Lancet. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00710-8