Professor Fran Baum AO

Stretton Health Equity, Stretton Institute, University of Adelaide, Australia

Professor Fran Baum AO is a public health social scientist with a special interest in creating and advocating for healthy, equitable and sustainable societies. She is Director of Stretton Health Equity, Stretton Institute, University of Adelaide and an NHMRC Investigator Fellow.   

From 2009-2021 she was a Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor and Director of the Southgate Institute for Health, Society and Equity at Flinders University. She received an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for her public health service.

She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and of the Australian Health Promotion Association.  She is a past National President and Life Member of the Public Health Association of Australia. She is the immediate past co-Chair of the Global Steering Council of the People’s Health Movement – a global network of health activist (phmovement.org) and a member of the PHM Advisory Council.

She is the author of over 400 publications including these books: The New Public Health (2016, Oxford University Press) and Governing for Health (2019, Oxford University Press) and co-editor of the Oxford Textbook of Global Public Health (2021). 

The impact on and role of hospitals and health systems in a troubled world.

BAUM, Fran

Globally, we are facing economic, social, and ecological poly-crises. The rate of change is astounding and institutions and people  need to adapt and determine ways to mitigate and adapt to the crises. Hospitals and health services typically don’t control the source of the crisis but suffer the consequences. Economically, austerity budgets and unfair economic systems mean that health systems rarely have the resources they need to provide for demand. Demand for health care is increasing in face of tsunami of chronic disease fuelled by social and commercial determinants of health and health inequity yet resources are extremely inequitably distributed. In the increasing conflicts round the world, health services and health personnel have been attacked. Health services are also at the front line of responding to the increasing number of climate-change induced disasters.

While health systems bear the consequences of the impact of interacting crises they can also become part of the solution. My paper will examine the actions that can be taken by health services to help mitigate the crisis. The discussion will include: the role of health systems in reducing the use of greenhouse gases; the characteristics of equitable health systems including considerations of global equity; effective forms of health system disease prevention and health promotion including championing of intersectoral approaches such as Health in All Policies which tackle the social and commercial determinants of health. I will also consider the role of advocacy by health systems personnel for a fairer and more equitable world through civil society groups using the People’s Health Movement as an example.

My paper will conclude with a message about the importance of maintaining hope in a world which often makes it challenging to remain hopeful.

Professor Richard G. Wilkinson

Emeritus Professor of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham

Richard Wilkinson studied economic history and the philosophy of science at the London School of Economics before training in epidemiology. Now professor emeritus, his research drew attention to health inequalities and then to the role of income and income inequality as determinants of health.

His books were the subject of two documentary films – The Great Leveller (1996) and The Divide (2016). The Spirit Level, (with Kate Pickett) published in 24 languages, won the 2011 Political Studies Association Publication of the Year Award and the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize. His two TED talks have been watched 5 million and 2 million times.

Richard Wilkinson received Solidar’s Silver Rose Award, the Irish Cancer Society’s Charles Cully Memorial medal, and was The Australian Society for Medical Research’s medallist of the year in 2017.

Equality in Health and Wellbeing

WILKINSON, Richard

Richard Wilkinson will discuss the health and social effects of the large income differences between rich and poor in societies.

Most people, including politicians, have a very naïve view of inequality and assume that it only matters if it creates absolute poverty or is regarded as extremely unfair. Closer to the truth however is that inequality acts as a general social stressor, adding to what psychologists have called “the social evaluative threat”, increasing feelings of superiority and inferiority and making status and class divisions more powerful and more divisive. It has damaging consequences for a wide range of outcomes including physical and mental health, social cohesion, levels of violence, trust, drug abuse, social mobility and child wellbeing. Richard will illustrate some of these relationships using graphs comparing international differences in inequality and different outcomes.

The differences in the prevalence of these problem between more and less equal societies are sometimes very large.  That is because although the effects of inequality are greatest among the least well off, they are not confined to the poor: instead they extend to a large majority of the population.

The key mechanisms through which inequality has its effects are primarily psychosocial and focus particularly on the way apparent differences in personal worth associated with social status affect social ease and social relations. Through its psychosocial effects, inequality is a major limitation on the quality of life in modern societies.