What can we learn from theories of justice in addressing health inequalities?

Summary We survey the burgeoning literature on inequality of opportunity in health. We focus on ways to tackle health inequalities. We are of the opinion that the main contribution so far of this literature is in inviting us to choose a new indicator of the relative success of the public policy, which aims at reducing health inequalities. This indicator is the part of explained health inequalities due to lifestyles. We can defend the use of this indicator on the basis of a value judgment but we will restrain us to do so here. Our argument is mainly positive. It resorts on the fact that, so far, we do not know how to tackle health inequalities coming from differences in lifestyles. These inequalities seem more irreducible than inherited health inequalities, as the Great Britain example shows us. When these inequalities are quite high in proportion of total explained inequalities, it means that we are not so far from a public health policy, which is going to reach his main objective in reducing health inequalities.