WELCOME TO THE SOUTHWARK ATLAS OF HEALTH
This Atlas is designed to illustrate the usefulness of geodemographics when working with public health information. Its focus is the area administered by Southwark Primary Care Trust, an area of South East London with a population of nearly 300,000.
Geodemographics are small area (neighbourhood) measures of social, economic and demographic conditions. They allow us to link diverse datasets, to detect and monitor geographical patterns, to analyse the correspondence between different events and occurrences, and to map population and environmental data sources at a range of geographical scales.
Applications in which geodemographic techniques are likely to complement existing health information systems include the following:
- Classification of areas based on socio-demographic and lifestyle variables in order to highlight population level health inequalities and to facilitate area based targeting of interventions
- Data mining of high resolution datasets in order to generate working hypotheses for public health studies
- Enabling small area health studies of the risks to health at neighbourhood level
- Development of practical and ethical codes for targeting on the basis of geographical health information systems.
Inequalities in health remain one of the most evocative manifestations of wider social inequality: for example, the risks of premature death or experiencing limiting long-term illness may be more than twice as high for those in some of the lowest paid occupations relative to highest paid (Graham 2005).
Many studies have explored income, occupation and deprivation as dimensions of health inequalities (Davey Smith 2003). Danny Dorling has done a lot of work in this area and produce interesting papers on possible correlations between geodemographics and health. The challenge for health geodemographics is in the widest sense to expose health inequalities at any lifestage, to provide contextual information, and to inform public health campaigns that are efficient, effective and fair.
REFERENCES [TOP]
Davey Smith, G. 2003. Health Inequalities - lifecourse approaches. Bristol: The Policy Press .
Graham, H. 2005. Intellectual disabilities and socio-economic inequalities in health: an overview of research. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities 18:101-111.
