The sudden global reduction in credit may lead to opportunities to rethink and improve global strategies to reduce health inequities, an international conference heard last week.

Michael Marmot, chairman of the World Health Organization’s commission on social determinants of health, said, “During the crises [the first and second world wars] there was social solidarity and the thought that we have to do things differently. The credit crisis is an opportunity to say are we going to do things differently.” He was speaking at a conference entitled Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity through Action on the Social Determinants of Health.

Professor Marmot pointed to the fact that Western governments had recently found hundreds of billions of dollars to …