The Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) is a partner in the European project DETERMINE, building on its previous involvement in the Closing the Gap project in 2004-2006. DETERMINE is an EU Consortium for Action on the Socio-economic Determinants of Health (SDH). 

The overall objective of DETERMINE (2007 – 2001) is to achieve greater awareness and capacity amongst decision makers in all policy sectors to take health and health equity into consideration and to strengthen collaboration between health and other sectors. This requires, amongst other things, building the evidence-base on policies that address the socioeconomic determinants of health inequalities (SDHI). 

This document presents the outcomes of an analysis of questionnaires completed by 15 DETERMINE partners in EU Member States as well as EuroHealthNet at the European level, exploring examples of policies and actions addressing SDHI. The aim of this analysis was to get a better insight into EU governments’ experiences with cross-sectoral collaboration to address the social determinants of health inequalities, in order to build on these experiences. 

In the first year of the project (2007-2008) 15 DETERMINE partners identified policies and actions that have taken place within countries, and at the EU level, to address Social Determinants of Health Inequalities. These policies and actions were identified via a questionnaire, which also identified structures and tools/mechanisms being used in the country to support a ‘health in all policy’ approach.