Sir Michael Marmot has led research groups on health inequalities for more than 35 years. He chaired the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, set up by WHO in 2005, and produced the report Closing the gap in a generation in 2008. He conducted a Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in england Post-2010, which published the report Fair Society, Healthy Lives in 2010. He chaired the European Review of Social Determinants of Health and the Health Divide, for the WHO European Regional Office, and the Breast Screening Review for the NHS National Cancer Action Team, and was a member of The Lancet-university of Oslo Commission on global governance for health. he is a Principal Investigator of the Whitehall II studies of health inequalities among British civil servants, and leads the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. He is a former President of the British Medical Association and the current President of the British Lung Foundation. He was a member of the Royal Commission on environmental Pollution for six years, and in 2000 was knighted by the Queen, for services to epidemiology and the understanding of health inequalities. He won the Balzan Prize for Epidemiology in 2004, gave the Harveian Oration in 2006, and won the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research in 2008. He was awarded a harvard Lown Professorship for 2014-2017. He is President of the World Medical Association since 2015. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from 14 universities.

ABSTRACT
The health gap: the challenge of an unequal world

Taking action to reduce health inequalities is a matter of social justice. In developing strategies for tackling health inequalities we need to confront the social gradient in health not just the difference between the worst off and everybody else.  There is clear evidence when we look across countries that national policies make a difference and that much can be done in cities, towns and local areas. But policies and interventions must not be confined to the health care system; they need to address the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age.  The evidence shows that economic circumstances are important but are not the only drivers of health inequalities. Tackling the health gap will take action, based on sound evidence, across the whole of society.