Health Inequalities, Law and Society

This chapter presents and addresses some foundational questions for legal studies of health inequalities. It adopts a broad understanding of health and explains how health opportunities and outcomes are subject in large part to determinants created by social structures and systems, including legal and political decisions and norms. We will explain how we understand problematic health inequalities to refer to avoidable, unfair, and systemic health disparities. Even whilst there is wide recognition of the existence of health inequalities across the UK, to give real meaning to health inequalities as a question for law and policy much work has to be done. It is necessary to explain what health means and which group(s) is/are being identified as suffering unfair inequality. And it is necessary to identify how law, policy, and social structures more widely are part of the problem and what might be done to make them part of the solution.

The chapter works by asking four questions:
• What is health?
• What are health inequalities?
• Doesn’t a legal right to equal healthcare secure health equality?
• How might a diverse range of voices contribute to fairness?

This is the accepted manuscript version of the chapter. The official version can be found in Diverse Voices in Health Law and Ethics: Important Perspectives (BUP, 2025). https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/diverse-voices-in-health-law-and-ethics