You’ll Live longer in the South than the North ???

[jimbo 111]

A MAJOR drive is being launched to tackle the huge North-South divide in health inequalities.
The North Health Equity project will bring together health chiefs, academic experts, council chiefs and the private, voluntary and community sectors to find workable solutions to bridge the gap which in some parts of the North means rates of early death are more than double those in the South, with people in the North typically living shorter lives with a greater burden of illness.

Prof Paul Johnstone, Public Health England’s regional director in the North, said the aim was to get a “fairer health deal for people in the North”.

He said it was already clear that a key part of reducing the gap in health outcomes involved economic regeneration and job creation.
“Because of poorer health, people in the north of England have shorter lifetimes and suffer more years of ill health than people in the South,” he said.
“People don’t just get ill because of the health services that are – or are not – available to them.
“People get ill because they can’t find a job, they haven’t got enough money, they feel powerless, they don’t live in a safe, clean, warm place, they didn’t get a good start in life or had a poor education and because they live in a place that wasn’t well planned to live an active, productive life.”

Read more

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news...-up-with-cure-for-deadly-health-gap-1-6169740

 

[Izzy]

God help you if you live in Glasgow!

http://www.gcvs.org.uk/news_and_information/1598_lowest_uk_life_expectancy_for_glaswegians

 

[jimbo 111]

God help you if you live in Glasgow!

http://www.gcvs.org.uk/news_and_information/1598_lowest_uk_life_expectancy_for_glaswegians

Hello Izzy

Your post above makes interesting and thought provoking reading
the following article gives further insight to this problem
jimbo 111

The Scottish Health Survey: Topic Report: The Glasgow Effect

The link between socio-economic circumstances and health is well known, and has been widely investigated, with deprivation found to be a key factor for a variety of health outcomes. One such health outcome is mortality. Scotland has the highest mortality rate in western Europe among the working age population, and has done since the late 1970s

Carstairs and Morris 2 analysed data from 1980 - 1982 investigating whether social class and deprivation could explain the excess mortality experienced by Scotland compared to England and Wales. They found that standardising for social class had little effect, whereas standardising for relative affluence and deprivation greatly reduced the difference. However the impact of deprivation on the difference in mortality between Scotland and England and Wales has been found to have reduced since 1981; using census data from 1981, 1991 and 2001, Hanlon et al 3 found that whilst in 1981 deprivation explained over 60% of the excess mortality found in Scotland, in 1991 and 2001 deprivation explained less than half of the excess mortality. The excess mortality increased from 4.7% in 1981 to 8.2% in 2001 after adjusting for age, sex and deprivation. The largest excesses have been found in the most deprived areas of Scotland.

Much of the work investigating the 'Glasgow Effect' has focused on mortality as an outcome; it is also of interest to know whether there is a 'Glasgow Effect' for other health outcomes and health behaviours, which themselves influence mortality. A report written for the Glasgow Centre for Population Health in 2006 8 examined the levels of many health behaviours in Glasgow City and Greater Glasgow compared to the rest of Scotland, and found many examples of worse health behaviours, including alcohol consumption, diet and smoking, as well as worse health outcomes, such as higher prevalence of limiting long-term illness. A piece of work carried out by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health in 2008 9 compared health indicators in Greater Glasgow with those in areas across Europe. It found that Greater Glasgow had the worst levels for a number of health behaviours and health outcomes, including binge drinking, excess weekly alcohol consumption, self-assessed general health and psychological morbidity.

Read more
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/11/10110338/4