The Australian Healthcare & Hospitals Association (AHHA) welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback to the Senate Committee on Australia's domestic response to the World Health Organization's (WHO) Commission on the Social Determinants of Health report "Closing the gap within a generation”.

In 2005, the World Health Organization (WHO) established the Commission on Social Determinants of Health (the Commission) to “marshal the evidence on what can be done to promote health equity, and to foster a global movement to achieve it”.  In 2008, the Commission released its report Closing the gap within a generation which identified preventable health inequities arising from the circumstances and environment in which people live and work and the political, social and economic influences on these circumstances .

The three broad recommendations of the Commission were:
1. Improve daily living conditions – the circumstances in which children are born, grow, and learn, and improve the conditions in which all people  live, work and age.
2. Tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money and resources
3. Measure and understand the problem and assess the impact of action.