Campaigning coalition, Health Equals, launches a new campaign in Gateshead to call on the new Government to fix the stark health inequalities that are cutting thousands of lives short across the UK every year. In parts of the North East , life expectancy is 16 years lower than in some other parts of the UK, and evidence shows that health inequalities are getting worse. Currently, factors like income, housing and air quality can cut your life short because of where you’re born in the UK.
Advertisement Advertisement Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Shields Gazette, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Health Equals – a coalition of 27 organisations including Mind, the British Red Cross, Citizens Advice Bureau, Shelter, Crisis, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and more – has launched the #MakeHealthEqual campaign because more than 1 in 5 children in the North East live in poverty1, nearly a third (32%) of people in the North East do not have enough money to live well2 and air pollution in the North East is too high, with the level of fine particle pollution breaching the World Health Organisation’s healthy levels3. To shine a spotlight on the issue of health inequalities, Health Equals photographed 50 babies to illustrate the shocking range of life expectancies across different towns and cities in the UK.
One of these babies, from South Tyneside, is current.