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Recommendations for Future Work
The expert group on measuring health inequalities recommended that, rather than using area based measures of deprivation or socio-economic circumstances, linkage of individual records of health status with individual records of socio-economic status should be pursued. For example:
- Linkage to income records, such as: The inclusion of a question on income in the Census; Tax records from the Inland Revenue linked to mortality data (work on-going by Leyland et al); Investigation of the feasibility of linking Incapacity Benefit data with health datasets (work on-going by Glasgow University).
- Within survey linkage of individual income information with health variables such as self-assessed health, long-standing limiting illness, GHQ12 and in the future WEMWBS should be explored (using large scale national surveys such as Scottish Health Survey or Scottish Household Survey).
The Task Force reflected this in Equally Well with the following recommendation:
76. The Government, with relevant advice from experts, should work towards better information to describe health inequalities based on socio-economic status, for example looking at low income of individuals, not just average income of people living in a small area.
The expert group also recommended that:
- The age group used to define ' premature mortality' should be reviewed.
- The inequalities analyses should all include confidence intervals so that the statistical significance of changes over time can be accurately assessed.
- The use of statistical process control methods to present results should be investigated.
These recommendations will be taken into consideration in the preparation of future versions of this report.
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