life expectancy

Health inequalities in Scotland

Audit that aims to assess how well public sector organisations are working together to tackle health inequalities. Given the scale and complexity of the problem, the detail the impact of wider policies such as education, employment and housing on reducing health inequalities, is not examined.

Instead it focuses on how bodies work together to identify need, target resources and monitor their collective performance in reducing health inequalities. The report:

Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2011

This report comes at a time when the UK government has outlined its main policy intentions and its strategy to reduce poverty. Although the statistics presented in this report still almost entirely reflect the policies of the previous government, the Labour record is the Coalition inheritance.

This commentary discusses the implications of that record for the current government in the light of its commitments on child poverty and social mobility set out in strategy documents published in 2011.

The aftershock of deindustrialisation : trends in mortality in Scotland and other parts of post-industrial Europe

Report of a study which attempted to improve understanding of the role of post-industrial decline on the health of Scotland through making comparisons between Scotland and other areas of Europe which have experienced a similar process of industrialisation and de-industrialisation.

Life in old age (Radio 4 series: The seven ages of humanity)

Four Radio 4 programmes in a series about the health and wellbeing of the seven ages of humanity. These four programmes explore life experiences and issues for people in their sixties and seventies.

The first programme looks at memory loss, the second discusses chronic conditions such as osteo-arthritis and the inability to hear, the third examines retirement, and the final programme looks at how medicine can fix some of the physical problems of old age.

Health in Scotland 2008: shedding light on hidden epidemics

Report from the Chief Medical Officer reviewing some of the data on the habits which studies are showing have a dramatic effect on risks of developing chronic ill health or premature death.

It also considers some of the mental health problems which may contribute to chronic stress in sufferers by lessening their ability to control and manage their lives. Such problems include ADHD in adults, post traumatic stress syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorders.

Healthy life expectancy in Scotland

Report presenting the results of work to produce healthy life expectancy estimates for Scotland. Data was taken from the Scottish subset of the General Household Survey and the Scottish Household Survey and compared with estimates from the 2001 Census to determine whether these surveys would be suitable for monitoring healthy life expectancy on a regular basis.