The Marmot Place Programme

Where people are born, live, grow, work and get older has the biggest influence on health and health inequalities.

We've partnered with the UCL Institute of Health Equity to become a Marmot Place. This means we've committed to tackling health inequalities and improving health fairness in Oxfordshire by working with local partners across the system. These include local authorities, communities, public services, businesses, and voluntary sector organisations. 

About the programme

The programme aims to create a fairer and healthier Oxfordshire and is initially focusing on three of the eight Marmot Principles:

• Give every child the best start in life
• Create fair employment and good work for all
• Ensure a healthy standard of living for all

Work to embed these principles continues, with several key projects underway. The projects work to:

• Understand rural inequalities in Oxfordshire beyond the ten most deprived wards
• Working with business partners to support fair employment in the county
• Support primary care networks by developing dedicated resources they can use to identify and address inequalities affecting their patients' health
• Develop policy research through the Local Policy Lab, a new alliance between the University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University and Oxfordshire County Council. This research will directly link back to the Marmot Place principles

It's not about stopping what we're already doing, but evaluating and building on existing work, measuring and tackling rural inequality, and utilising research to find innovative solutions. 

At the heart of this work are the charity and voluntary organisations across the county that work tirelessly in our communities, making a real difference in helping tackle inequalities.

Building on the success of our launch event at Rose Hill Community Centre in November 2024, the next event took place in June 2025, hosted by Healthwatch Oxfordshire for the Community and Voluntary Sector. This was a great opportunity to share excellent examples of community work, support local residents in benefiting from local services, and discuss the challenges we need to address in partnership. Find out more about the event here.

Projects are underway to embed the principles 

• Project 1: Best start in life
• Project 2: Fair Employment
• Project 3: Rural inequalities
• Project 4: Primary Care
• Project 5: Local Policy Lab

Keeping up to date

Read more about Oxfordshire's Marmot Place in the news on our news web pages.

Sign up for the latest news about partnership work as a Marmot county.