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Tackling health inequalities
30/09/2008
Low birthweight, mental wellbeing and premature mortality are among the measures which will be used to assess Scotland's long-term progress in tackling health inequalities.
By assessing improvements against a range of measures, the Scottish Government will be able to monitor long-term progress of Equally Well, the report of the Ministerial Taskforce on Health Inequalities.
The full list of indicators which will be taken into account is:
- Healthy life expectancy (at birth)
- Premature mortality - before 75, from all causes
- Mental wellbeing
- Low birthweight
- Coronary heart disease
- Cancer
- Alcohol problems (hospital admission for under 75s and deaths aged 45-74)
- Deaths between ages of 15 and 44
In measuring progress, the gap between best and worst will be compared. The scale of the problem will also be monitored, along with the steepness of the inequalities gradient.
Public Health Minister Shona Robison said:
"Nobody should be condemned to a life of ill health because of where they live or their family's background. Sadly, however, poor health and poverty tend to go hand-in-hand - even in a modern Scotland.
"In Equally Well we set out our vision to tackle these health inequalities with a radical rethink of Scotland's public services designed to achieve generational transformation.
"This is not something which can be achieved overnight which is why it's vital that we have clear and consistent measures in place to allow us to monitor progress and ensure we are closing the inequality gap."
Today's report, Long-term Monitoring of Health Inequalities, First Report on Headline Indicators, implements recommendations from the taskforce report which stated that key measures to monitor progress should be agreed. The overall objective is a reduction in health inequalities in Scotland, in the long-term.