Becoming a ‘Marmot city’ to underpin its services has helped council improve health and inequality outcomes
In 2013, Coventry city council decided to become a self-described “Marmot city”, which meant working in partnership with the Institute of Health Equity at University College London to improve wellbeing and reduce disparities in health outcomes within the local population. Between 2010 and 2012, there was an 11-year gap between life expectancy at birth between men with the highest and lowest incomes, while the inequality between women in those income brackets stood at eight years.
“Coventry is quite a small and compact city, and there is widespread deprivation but there are also pockets of severe deprivation, and it’s a very diverse community,” says Angela Baker, a public health consultant for health inequalities and life chances at the council. “We felt that the Marmot tools, particularly the Marmot review, gave us a good framework.”
