The escalating COVID-19 crisis will widen the gulf between people with and without secure income, with experts outlining increasing inequities in health outcomes for South Australians in a wide-ranging new report.
Entitled SA: The Heaps Unfair State: Why have health equities increased in South Australia and how can this trend be reversed?, the report from by the Southgate Institute for Health, Society and Equity and the South Australian Council of Social Service (SACOSS) highlights significant increases in inequities in SA since the 1980s and also recommends how to improve this state’s health outcomes.
The report draws on publicly available data on health and health inequalities in Australia and data on the social determinants of health to provide quantitative examination of potential underlying factors that might explain the increase in socio-economic health inequalities in South Australia between the late 1980s and the period 2011-2015.
The report signals that a holistic approach, addressing the social determinants of health, is necessary if the existing problems are going to be effectively changed.
The Final, Summary and Statistical Reports and the videos of the Launch are available here, and more at the Croakey website.