Understanding Inequalities: new thinking for public policy

Simon Deakin is a Professor of Law. He specializes in labour law, private law, company law and EU law. His research is concerned, more generally, with the relationship between law and the social sciences, and he contributes regularly to the fields of law and economics, law and development, and empirical legal studies. He is Director of the Centre for Business Research (http://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/), co-Chair of the Public Policy SRI and a Fellow of Peterhouse. His books include Tort Law (7th. ed. with Basil Markesinis and Angus Johnston, 2012), Labour Law (6th. ed. 2012, with Gillian S. Morris), The Law of the Labour Market: Industrialization, Employment, and Legal Evolution (2005, with Frank Wilkinson), and Hedge Fund Activism in Japan: The Limits of Shareholder Primacy (2012, with John Buchanan and Dominic Chai). He is editor in chief of the Industrial Law Journal and a member of the editorial board of the Cambridge Journal of Economics.

The Rt Hon Sir Vince Cable is the former Coalition Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills and President of the Board of Trade (2010-2015). He was Member of Parliament for Twickenham 1997-2015; deputy leader of the Lib Dems 2007-2010 and shadow chancellor 2003-2010. As MP Dr Cable was chair of the All Party Police Group and All Party Group on Victims of Crime and a member of the Treasury Select committee. From 1983 to 1990, Vince worked as special advisor on Economic Affairs for the Commonwealth Secretary General, Sir Sonny Ramphal. In 1990 he joined Shell International taking up the post of Chief Economist in 1995. He has also been head of the economics programme at Chatham House and is a former fellow of Nuffield College Oxford and the LSE.

Professor Kelly is Senior Visiting Fellow in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge and a member of St John’s College, Cambridge. Between 2005 and 2014 he was the Director of the Centre for Public Health at the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) where he led the teams producing public health guidelines. Professor Kelly’s research interests include the methods and philosophy of evidence based medicine, prevention of CVD, health inequalities, health related behaviour change, the causes of non-communicable disease, end of life care, dental public health and the sociology of chronic illness. Professor Simon Szreter is a Fellow of St John's College and Professor of History and Public Policy at the Faculty of History. Professor Szreter is an historian of population, public health and reproduction. His most recent books have all presented historical studies with diverse contemporary public policy implications: Registration and Recognition. Documenting the Person in World History (2012), The Big Society Debate. A New Agenda for Social Welfare? (2011), History, Historians and Development Policy (2011) and Sex Before the Sexual Revolution (2010). Simon Szreter is a Steering Committee member of the Public Policy SRI.

Sarah Radcliffe is Professor of Latin American Geography and Fellow of Christ's College. Professor Radcliffe has been working on issues around intersectional inequalities and exclusion from the benefits of development interventions and government programmes in South America for a number of years. Her talk today focuses on the colonial-modern legacies of development and public policy and the ways that these are being re-worked and challenged under Ecuador's Buen Vivir agenda of 'equality within diversity'.

We are witnessing increasing divisions in society whereby health gains for some are not shared by others; where social mobility is falling; and where the pay gap between ordinary workers and corporate leaders has grown exponentially. Inequality is now a mainstream political issue. What does current research bring to our understanding of how inequality shapes our economy and society? What do the public think about inequality? Can research provide evidence of interventions to reduce inequalities?

Dr Monsivais’ talk today focuses on whether inequities in neighbourhood food environments contribute to inequalities in diet and health. Food environments, characterised by the density, distribution and types of food outlets on our high streets and in our neighbourhoods, are recognised as a population- level determinant of eating habits and health. In fact, the proliferation of fast food outlets in England was raised as a public health concern by the Chief Medical Officer in her most recent report. But the density of fast food outlets and other aspects of the food environment vary in relation to local socioeconomic conditions. In particular, deprived areas tend to have more fast food outlets and may lack access to healthier food alternatives. In this presentation, I will summarise what’s known about food environments, diet and obesity, highlighting some of our most recent evidence that unhealthy food environments may drive or amplify inequalities in diet and obesity among working-age adults in the East of England. I’ll conclude by reviewing policy implications and describe a web-based tool that we are developing to assist policy makers in targeting interventions to promote healthier food environments.