Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) impacts populations unequally, with high-income countries showing inequalities in infection rates, antimicrobial-resistant infection and antimicrobial exposure. This article describes the process used to propose national health inequalities targets and commitments for the 2024-2029 UK AMR National Action Plan (NAP) alongside a case study highlighting the progress made toward meeting its commitments. NAPs published in or before 2023 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries were searched for references to health inequalities. A modified, four-stage Delphi process was used to reach consensus on health inequalities targets and commitments for inclusion in the second UK NAP. Following the NAP publication, a progress review assessed the UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) (England’s national public health institution responsible for AMR surveillance) performance against health inequalities commitments. Twenty-three NAPs met the eligibility criteria and four NAPs (17%) from Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom referenced health inequalities. Consensus-based commitments focused on improving reporting of health inequalities data, developing tools to identify and address inequalities, and implementing and evaluating interventions. Following the first year of the 2024-29 NAP, a gap analysis of the UKHSA surveillance data demonstrated consistent reporting of health inequalities data across routine healthcare-associated infection and AMR outputs, a health inequalities toolkit is in development and scoping reviews have commenced to inform intervention development.

Requests for assessment and treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults have increased substantially in many countries. This trend appears to reflect increased recognition, greater public awareness and changing patterns of help-seeking, rather than a true increase in prevalence. As demand for services grows, concerns have emerged regarding access to care, long waiting times, variation in service provision and inequities in diagnosis and treatment. This article examines ADHD in adults from a public mental health perspective, reviewing epidemiology, associated comorbidities, functional and economic burdens, and adverse outcomes, including evidence of reduced life expectancy. It considers inequities in recognition, diagnosis and treatment, including those related to sex/gender and race/ethnicity. Finally, it explores how adult ADHD services are organised in different countries and reviews recent recommendations for service development from NHS England. Adult ADHD has implications that extend beyond its core symptoms, and psychiatrists have an important role in improving recognition, addressing inequities in access to care and leading the development of services that improve outcomes and reduce preventable harm.

Universalism has long been the cornerstone of long-term care (LTC) provision in Nordic welfare states. However, population ageing has led to a decline in public care services, prompting some service users to seek support from alternative sources, such as privately financed and informal care. This raises concerns about increasing inequities between those with access to financial and social resources and those without. We take a novel approach to examine whether reductions in public care have exacerbated inequities in a central care outcome: Social Care-Related Quality of Life (SCRQoL), assessed via the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT). Drawing on comprehensive registry and survey data, we explore the relationship between service users’ social and financial resources and their SCRQoL. Specifically, we investigate whether disparities in SCRQoL between service users with and without resources have grown over time. Our findings reveal limited evidence for social and financial resources contributing to service users’ SCRQoL and no evidence of increasing inequity over time. These findings suggest that service users do not mobilize financial assets or family networks to compensate for retrenchment in public services. Instead, our results underline that physical functioning and social participation are crucial for sustaining SCRQoL. As pressure on public LTC services is expected to intensify over the next two decades, resource-related disparities in SCRQoL may become more pronounced, meaning that preserving and enhancing older adults’ functioning and SCRQoL through preventive strategies and reablement interventions should remain a key policy priority.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a serious health threat and strains of TB resistant to first-line therapies account for significant TB-related morbidity and mortality. Widely recognized as a disease of poverty concentrated in low- and middle-income countries, drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) is a result of deep-seated deprivation and the shortcomings of under-resourced health systems. Traditionally, the response to TB, and particularly DR-TB, has been focused on dealing with the infection and preventing onward transmission, for example, through isolating people with TB in sanatoria or specialized hospital wards. Recently, activists and policy makers have recognized the need to put people affected by the disease at the center of TB programs, but this is just the beginning of the necessary “just” transition from inequitable and unsustainable approaches to addressing TB to ones that are inclusive, community-centered, and resilient. In this article, we examine antimicrobial resistance in TB and highlight the need for a multisectoral, justice-oriented approach that goes beyond biomedical paradigms—we propose a “just” transition that addresses the unequal burden of human suffering and injustices that have become systemic in TB programs. We see a “just transition” as involving long-term structural changes to technologies, policy, infrastructure, scientific knowledge, and practice.

The prevalence of female genital schistosomiasis (FGS) and male genital schistosomiasis (MGS) remains high in many low-to-medium-income countries, and each has sex-specific disease sequelae with wider detrimental gender and health impacts. Social science research studies on the former outnumber those on the latter. Indeed, in many countries across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), MGS (as with male reproductive and sexual health issues in general) is overlooked, underappreciated, and broadly orphaned within urogenital and intestinal schistosomiasis research and control. Similarly, in those countries where MGS has been reported formally, its psychosocial dimensions and effects remain poorly understood, especially in terms of context-specific cultural and societal factors. In this scoping review, we attempt to better contextualize MGS within men’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and general wellbeing, as it often draws parallels with social science research in FGS. We discuss common psychosocial determinants, highlighting why current surveillance of MGS is particularly poor and the primary health care response to mitigate it is bottlenecked and largely stalled within the wider health system, from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives. Our specific approach remains cognisant of the context of infected households where all members could be suffering from urogenital and/or intestinal schistosomiasis. Looking ahead, we develop and frame a pragmatic social science research agenda to encourage and better explore and assess the detrimental impact of MGS on infected men and boys, considering appropriate ameliorations more holistically within primary care.

We explore the efficiency and distributive implications of a multilateral bargaining model with endogenous production of the surplus under two different timings: ex ante and ex post bargaining. Both timings are commonly observed in business partnerships and alliance formations. The theoretical predictions confirm an intuitive economic tenet: in ex post bargaining, effort is considered sunk and opportunistic bargaining behavior will dissuade players from producing. On the other hand, ex ante bargaining entails an allocation of ownership shares that induces at least certain members to invest in the common fund because their return is guaranteed. Experiments show opposite results: ex post bargaining yields almost fully efficient outcomes while the reverse timing entails near zero efficiency. The psychological theory of inequity is useful in reconciling these divergent results.

This article critically examines the inequities in the access to COVID-19 vaccine and the lessons for global health law. Despite the rapid development and approval of COVID-19 vaccines, the rollout exposed severe systemic failures rooted in preexisting economic distortions and market inefficiencies. The article argues that addressing vaccine inequity requires more than improved distribution and solidarity, but effective reinvention of the global vaccine supply chain through evidence-based and meaningful market-shaping measures. It calls for a transformative approach to global health governance, emphasising the need for a comprehensive, human rights-compliant policy framework to correct structural problems in international markets, moving beyond superficial exhortations to equity.