In 1985, the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region published the document ‘Targets for Health for All’, defining 38 targets which the 32 member states had unanimously determined to complete by the year 2000. 1 A major theme of this document was that ‘health for all implies equity’, and in its first target it recognized that reducing differences in health status between and within countries requires improving the health of disadvantaged populations. Margaret Whitehead’s widely known publication commissioned by WHO, ‘Concepts and Principles of Equity and Health’, later described health inequities as measurable differences in health profiles, which are not only ‘unnecessary and avoidable, but in addition are considered unfair and unjust’. 2 Another proposed definition of healthy inequity is the presence of systematic health disparities between groups holding different positions within a social hierarchy. Braveman and Gruskin 3 Health equity demands that all people in a society must have the ability to achieve good health, in the absence of obstacles constructed by artificially established social, economic, demographic, or geographic inequalities.