Health equity
Equity, equality, bioethics
Research aim
This research group aims to contribute to health equity from an ethical and epidemiological perspective. We identify and explain health inequalities and ethically evaluate whether identified health inequalities also lead to health inequity.
About us
We focus on underrepresented groups in research, in particular women and pregnant and lactating people.
We are motivated by the WHO definition of health equity. According to WHO equity is the absence of unfair and avoidable or remediable differences in health among population groups defined socially, economically, demographically or geographically. This means that health equity is not equivalent to measuring health inequalities but that there is also an ethical task to determine whether a found health inequality is, in fact, unjust. We add value by clarifying appeals to health inequity and by providing practitioners with tools to identify health inequity in routine care. As examples of our work, we study how to determine what counts as health inequity in pregnant people by looking at routinely collected pregnancy data. We also study mechanisms, both biological, behavioural, or otherwise that explain health inequalities and inequities by sex and gender. We partner with the WHO Collaborating Center for Bioethics Utrecht.