Legal & General has launched a £3m health equity fund, in partnership with Sir Michael Marmot and the University College London Institute of Health Equity.
The fund will support up to 150 place-based initiatives across the UK that directly address the social determinants of health – non-medical social and economic factors, including housing, education, infrastructure and quality of work, which have an influence on local and national public health.
It will provide grant funding of up to £75,000 per project. Of the £3m total, £1m will be deployed as a trailblazer fund for the North East, ahead of opening up a UK-wide approach in the summer.
The fund was launched following L&G and the Institute of Health Equity working together since 2021 to explore the role of business in reducing health inequalities in the UK.
Research from the partnership has shown that:
(i) tackling the root causes of health and social inequalities – the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age – can prevent or improve poor health outcomes and increase healthy life expectancy; and
(ii) business and investor involvement in addressing health and social inequalities can drive positive outcomes for people and communities and generate commercial and economic benefits (such as increased productivity) at local, regional and national levels.
Pete Gladwell, group social impact and investment director at Legal & General, said: “We know that businesses and investors can be a force for good in society, and they have a crucial part to play in addressing health inequalities as investors, employers and providers of goods and services.
“We believe we can scale up this positive influence further by partnering with local and sector experts, such as Legal & General’s work with Sir Michael Marmot.
“Place-based, localised initiatives are essential to tackling the social, environmental and economic challenges facing the UK, including improving public health. We want to use this fund to empower those initiatives to benefit more people.
“We have seen the ongoing positive benefits of integrating climate and environmental considerations in business strategies and investments; considering and integrating the needs of communities and public health and wellbeing can have the same effect. Reducing disparities in health, wealth and wider society creates thriving places and communities and stable, growing economies.”
Sir Michael Marmot, director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity, said: “Community and voluntary sector organisations make vital contributions to health and health equity by supporting and representing excluded and disadvantaged communities, delivering vital services, providing opportunities for volunteering and advocating for improvements in the conditions in which people live.
“Support from businesses, such as Legal & General, for this under-resourced sector is vital. The IHE is hopeful that L&G’s grants to the voluntary and community sectors will support the health of the communities who benefit.
“While healthcare is important in treating ill health, the causes of ill health lie in the conditions in which we are born, grow, live, work and age. It is these social determinants of health that largely determine our health and how long we live. The UCL Institute of Health Equity provides the evidence of what to do and how to do it, and the Health Equity Network is an important vehicle to turn that evidence into practice.”
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