How did public health nurse educators think health inequalities should be tackled?

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Nurses have long been identified as key contributors to reducing health inequalities. Yet health inequalities are increasing in the UK despite policies intended to reduce them. This raises questions about whether policymakers and nurses understand similarly how inequalities are created and sustained, and how nurses are educationally prepared to help reduce them.

This qualitative research project aimed to understand how public health nurse educators view public health as a strategy for reducing health inequalities. Researchers conducted 26 semi-structured interviews with public health nurse educators based in higher education institutions.

The educators described health inequalities as the foundation on which a public health framework should be built. Two distinct views emerged: some proposed a population approach focused on upstream preventive strategies, while others proposed behavioural approaches focused on empowering vulnerable individuals to improve their own health.

The authors concluded that upstream interventions have been shown to have more leverage than individual behavioural interventions in tackling the fundamental causes of health inequalities. Despite this, they said some nurses have a better understanding of individual interventions than they take population approaches.