Introduction

Social work is essentially an interventive discipline, as reflected in the contributions to this chapter. They not only pinpoint the adverse impact of social inequalities on health chances and experience, but also how this is an appropriate target for social work. In doing so, they also highlight specific dimensions of how social work policy and practice should identify and engage with global health inequalities.

Section 10.1 goes behind the scenes of the burgeoning Chinese economy, integral to global economic development, to explore adverse health consequences for internal migrant workers. It sets out how such workers are caught up in urban poverty and the fault lines in current health and welfare policy, inimical to health. Nevertheless, it also reveals how the vast scale of such problems need not preclude social work gaining traction on them locally. Student social workers’ initiatives show how imaginative community work can highlight and mitigate health disadvantages for micro-populations caught up in extensive social transformations.

Section 10.2 then sets out how sexual orientation as a site of health inequality should be integral to social work analysis and practice addressing global health inequalities. It explores the profound and diverse forms of oppression that lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people have suffered and their adverse health consequences. These range from homosexuality being a capital offence in some countries, to heterosexist barriers to health care. It then considers how recognition of this issue has acted as a springboard for social work policy and practice initiatives internationally, to secure LGB people's physical and psychological health requirements.

Finally, section 10.3 draws on a neighbourhood initiative from the US to argue for greater attention by social work to the insidious effects of homelessness on physical health, via psychological stress. It acknowledges that its social work project does not address the root causes of homelessness as, internationally, an adjunct to poverty.

However, it proposes that boosting social resources through solidarity and advocacy on a one-to-one basis may break into the vicious circle of homelessness–psychological stress–physical exhaustion and thereby constitute a compensatory social work resource for health.

Poverty and health policy in China

Introduction

The rapid development of China's economy has attracted worldwide attention as an integral feature of globalisation.