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Table 2 Examples of policies and activities that reduce health inequalities (intentionally or otherwise)

From: How to improve collaboration between the public health sector and other policy sectors to reduce health inequalities? – A study in sixteen municipalities in the Netherlands

Social

Physical

Education policy

• Community schools/facilities at schools

• Reducing dropout

• Community internships

• School accommodation

• Indoor school environment

• Projects aimed at pre-vocational secondary schools (lifestyle, drugs, safe sex, and overweight)

Housing policy

• Making houses more sustainable

• Improving older districts

• Deploying social programmes when houses are renovated in neighbourhoods to be restructured

• Report desk for nuisance and problems

Youth policy

• Youth and family centres (help with parenting and growing up)

•Reducing alcohol and drug use amongst young people

•Use of baby clinics for extra consultations in deprived neighbourhoods

Spatial planning policy

• Sports facilities and playgrounds

• Exercise-friendly environment

• Greenery

Social policy

• Collective health insurance for people on low incomes

• Reimbursement of costs for using municipal facilities

•Guiding people into work (incl. the ‘Fit for work’ programme)

• Improving the wellbeing of people on benefits

Environmental policy

• Noise abatement

• Improving indoor environments

• UMTS radiation and high-voltage lines

• Healthy and clean cities

Care policy

• Improving access to care

• Reducing social isolation

• Health promotion (overweight)

Healthy neighbourhoods

• Neighbourhood visions/plans

• Sporting neighbourhoods

Sport policy

• Local sports clubs

•‘Combination officers’

• Providing sports facilities

• Sport promotion projects

• After-school sport

• Encouraging young people from ethnic minorities to participate in sport

Safety policy

•Improving the health of repeat offenders

• Increased neighbourhood safety for lower-SES residents

• Organising help in individual problem situations

Integration policy

• Encouraging employment participation amongst ethnic minorities

• Improving socio-cultural integration and perception

Mobility policy

• Good public transport in deprived neighbourhoods

  1. The examples come from questionnaire and interview responses; the effectiveness of the policies and activities has not been assessed