Achieving Health Equity in Urban Settings

This issue of the journal is devoted to the social determinants of health in urban settings and associated interventions that protect health and promote health equity.The great disparity in health opportunities and health status between and within different population groups in and between countries at different economic development levels is one of the great challenges for the global community at the beginning of the 21st century. 1 The international community debated the issues of poverty, economic development, and health at a number of major summits toward the end of the 20th century, including the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 2 and the Copenhagen Social Summit in 1995.However, without specific targets or agreed dates for achieving those targets, progress on social and health equity was insufficient.One major reason was the lack of financial resources because of the noncompliance of affluent countries with the agreed aid target of 0.7% of their GDP.3 At the turn of the century, the international community took up the challenge of achieving better equity by formulating the Millennium Development Goals at the Millennium Summit in 2000, 4 many of which include priority health issues.Progress is visible for some of the goals, but not enough for them to be met by the target year: 2015.5 The targets address the needs of the poorest people, but economic and social inequities and associated health inequities remain.6 It should also be remembered that the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which almost all countries have signed, expressly states that all people have a right to live in conditions that promote health and protect life.