Introduction to Inclusion Health (2025–26)

People who experience one or more aspects of social exclusion, such as, state care in childhood, drug addiction, incarceration, homelessness, forced migration and/or belonging to a minoritised ethnic group such as Traveller, aboriginal or Roma face high levels of ill-health and significant challenges in accessing healthcare. Reducing health inequity requires specialised interventions tailored to the unique mental and physical health needs of people experiencing social exclusion (PESE), and their psychosocial and material circumstances.

Inclusion Health (IH) is an approach to practice, research and policy focused on understanding and meeting the health needs of people with experience of social exclusion. IH is growing into an established approach to healthcare in Ireland, both in hospital and community settings.

Ireland is a leading country in developing and deploying expertise in Inclusion Health over the last decade. The world’s first hospital-led Inclusion Health team was established in Dublin in 2016 with one half-time consultant and one full-time nurse manager in St James’s Hospital and was rapidly followed by the establishment of an IH team in the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital (MMUH) and Children’s Health Ireland (CHI). An Inclusion Health approach has become part of national health policy and the HSE has established eight additional interdisciplinary hospital-based IH teams on a pilot basis, as well as an array of community-based services using an IH approach. The Irish Department of Health is currently developing a framework for inclusion health in Ireland and the Health Service Executive is developing an Inclusion Health model of care.

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