HEALTH professionals in Scotland are setting out a range of policy objectives they say the Scottish Government should undertake to address inequalities resulting from people’s income, employment, education opportunities and where they live.

In a paper published today, the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) in Scotland identifies key priorities, which range from making taxation – including income tax – more progressive, mitigating the “adverse impacts” of welfare reform on the most vulnerable, to urging Westminster to introduce the Living Wage as Scotland’s national minimum wage.

It also calls for action to reduce child poverty over the next decade and for increased investment in “integrated public transport and active travel”.

The report – Healthy Lives, Fairer Futures – stresses the importance of including physical and mental health at the heart of all Scottish policies.

In what it describes as “a call to action”, the FPH says too many people in Scotland cannot enjoy the same chance of a long and healthy life as their peers across the UK and Europe.

“We know that people’s health and wellbeing is powerfully determined by the environment – being able to make the most of opportunities for a long and healthy life – as well as by high quality health services,” it says.

“We also know that people’s health can be adversely affected by public policies where health is not the major focus. In Scotland, we therefore need all our public policies to take health into account, so that all people in Scotland have an equal chance to enjoy a long and healthy life.

“A key way to ensure that the health of all people in Scotland is always a priority is to ensure that all public policies are specifically designed to impact positively on population health, and to address health inequalities by recognising health as a human right for everyone in Scotland.”

Josie Murray, one of the report’s co-authors and FPH advocacy chair in Scotland, told The National that changing social inequalities could help address inequalities in health.

“Announcing this doesn’t mean it’ll all be tidied up in a year. This is us putting our marker in the sand and saying these are things we want to make more noise about in partnership with our other third sector partners,” she said.

“These are the things we think must change so we do have a healthy population, because we are all working to help make the population healthy but there are things getting in our way.”

Murray said integrated public transport had a big role to play in health: “We welcome the announcement from the Scottish Government that they’re investing more in active travel arrangements.

“But if active travel is not integrated with public transport then it has only limited benefits to the communities it serves.”

Dr Lorna Willocks, consultant in public health medicine and college representative to the FPH in Scotland, said: “We know that people’s wellbeing can be adversely affected by public policies where health is not the major focus. That’s why we need all policy making to take health considerations into account.

“The environment and circumstances that people live in are just as important as the health services available to them when it comes to living a long and healthy life.”

Professor Derek Bell, president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, added: “People from more economically-deprived communities make greater use of unscheduled care services. It is important to ensure that patients are treated in the most appropriate setting, at the right time, and cared for by the right person. Therefore work to address inequalities and deprivation combined with investment in prevention may help to reduce the burden on both hospitals and general practice in Scotland.

“We support the faculty’s call to the Scottish Government to pursue policies that will improve circumstances which lead to poor health or social exclusion.”