UK government will fund research into health variations

Fifteen years after the Black report identified a link between poverty and ill health in Britain the government has accepted an action plan to tackle variations in health and is to fund a multimillion pound research programme. This follows the publication this week of a report to the chief medical officer, Dr Kenneth Calman, by an expert group headed by his deputy, Dr Jeremy Metters. The report, Variations in Health: What can the Department of Health and the NHS do?, finds evidence of appreciable variations …