The Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) was a partner in this EU funded project building on its previous involvement in the Closing the Gap project in 2004-2006.

DETERMINE was a three-year project (2007-2010) coordinated by EuroHealthNet which brought together a high-level consortium, with representation from 26 European countries, to apply evidence based approaches across policy sectors in the EU and its member states.

The aims of the consortium were to analyse and apply the most relevant and important knowledge on socio-economic determinants of health inequalities, introduce innovative pilot projects, and develop and implement awareness and capacity-building programmes.

Building on the work of the World Health Organization Commission on Social Determinants, the objective was to generate greater understanding and to change conceptions and approaches among policy makers and practitioners. The hope was for all policy sectors to take the issues of health and health equity into consideration when developing policy. Further information on the project is available at http://www.health-inequalities.eu
Work on the project began in June 2007. IPH i represented Ireland and Northern Ireland and led Work Package 5 which set out to explore the experiences and the value of applying action on the social determinants of health inequalities at both EU and member state level.
During the first year of the project, 15  DETERMINE partners identified and explored policies and actions that have taken place to address social determinants of health inequalities both within countries and at EU level. Working document  # 1 ‘Examples of activity in Europe’ presents these findings. In Year 2, the focus turned to identifying and exploring economic arguments to support action on social determinants of health inequalities. Findings are presented in Working document # 4 'Economic arguments for addressing social determinants of health inequalities'.
A final conference was held in Brussels in March 2010 and the final project publication publication The story of DETERMINE - Mobilising Action for Health Equity in the EU was published in April 2010.

IPH develops briefing reports on a variety of health issues for the EC Health and Living Conditions Network of the EU Observatory on the Social Situation. The information, which is then integrated into European reports, facilitates comparisons between countries on key health inequality issues.

In 2007, the Institute produced briefing papers on (i) health information in Ireland; (ii) long-term care of older people; (iii) migrant health.