Reducing health inequalities: new data suggest that the English strategy was partially successful: Table 1

Mackenbach provides a comprehensive and well-articulated analysis of why the 1997–2010 English Labour government's strategy to reduce health inequalities failed.1 This strategy was more ‘systematically developed, better resourced, more stringently implemented and more extensively monitored’ than those of other European countries and lasted for 13 years. Its success or failure is therefore of widespread importance. The key targets of the strategy were to reduce the relative gap in life expectancy at birth (LE) between the most deprived local authorities (called Spearhead) and the English average by 10% by 2010 and to cut relative inequalities in …