Download the final 'Closing the Gap' publication: Taking Action on Health Equity.
This publication contains summaries of what each of the 21 ´Closing the Gap´ partners are doing to address health inequalities in their countries, as well as the conclusions and recommendations of this 3-year initiative.
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In this section main tools used to implement and monitor national policies in the field of health inequalities are listed.
Denmark has a long tradition of monitoring inequality in health with the following components:
Register linkage with a focus on health inequality.
A unique personal identifier, the civil registry number, is part of all individual-based information stored in databases. For example the population register, the mortality register, the cancer register, the hospital register, the psychiatric register, the health insurance register, the substance abuse register, the child care register, the income register and the occupation register. Only bodies granted special permission can access this information.
Statistics Denmark and The Danish National Board of Health regularly present statistics on health related events (mortality, hospitalization etc.) distributed over various socio-economic variables. A special register was created in the mid 1990s called the “Prevention Register”. It links socio-economic registers to health related registers like mortality, cancer, hospitalization, health insurance etc. Register linkage is heavily used in research projects. For example, the medical birth register has been linked to socio-economic registers three times - around 1980, 1990 and 2000. This allows for studying social determinants of premature births, perinatal mortality, birth weight etc.
Health Interview Surveys
Nationally representative Health Interview Surveys were conducted in 1987, 1994, 2000 and 2005. The surveys from 2000 and 2005 also include children and are representative of the Danish counties (and new regions of Denmark). These surveys include a lot of information on living conditions, social issues and on socio-economic conditions. Many themes are included such as health promotion and health behavior, health conditions and diseases, quality of life, SF 36, violence, sexual behavior, disease behavior, use of health services etc. These surveys provide information on inequality as one of the themes included in the survey.
Local health profiles
The Medical Office of Health prepares local and regional register-based health profiles every 4 years. Many municipalities include local health profiles, including inequality measures, in the development of their health policy. One of the counties, Nordjyllands, developed a comprehensive county health policy combating inequality in health, basing on its' health profile. (See Documents for a copy of the document profile.)
Funding
There are specific funds earmarked for targeted health inequalities research offered by the Danish Research Council.