About AHIP:

AHIP has received $2.4 million funding over 5 years from the National Health and Medical Research Council through a Capacity Building in Population Health Grant. Health inequities remain a significant feature of Australia 's health profile. AHIP is committed to strengthening our understanding of the ways in which health inequities are created and sustained in Australia , and in developing more effective ways of reducing these inequities. This requires research into the complex relationships between many factors in people's lives including housing, employment, social connections, and the places and environments in which they live. The findings of the multidisciplinary research will contribute to debates about what level of inequities are acceptable in a country such as Australia and, most importantly, provide guidance to government, service providers and community groups about how to improve the quality of people's local environments and reduce the health differences between different groups of Australians.

Key features of the AHIP program are:

• Building the capacity of individual researchers in the health inequities field to work in a multidisciplinary framework by employing a number of postdoctoral researchers and offering PhD scholarships in key areas of research.
• Creating a broad network of Australian researchers working in health related areas, bringing them together in forums and in national/international conferences on health inequities.
• Strengthening links with the international research community focused on health inequities in the UK , Canada , South Africa , the USA and Ireland .
• Close working relationships with the South Australian Department of Health and VicHealth and Department of Human Services in Victoria to improve policy responses to health inequities.

AHIP is a program addressing social and economic determinants of health which aims to build capacity in multidisciplinary population health work by -

i) increasing understanding of the complex social, economic and environmental factors that contribute to health inequities; and

ii) improving policy, program and practice designed to reduce these inequities.