Agent-based Models of Geographical Systems

Selective migration, health and deprivation: a longitudinal analysis.

OBJECTIVES: To overcome the absence of socio-economic information in administrative databases and to monitor social inequalities in health, a material and social deprivation index was developed for Quebec and Canada. METHODS: The index is based on the smallest area unit used in Canadian censuses, with 400 to 700 persons on average. It includes six socio-economic indicators grouped along two dimensions – material and social – produced from principal component analyses. The index exists for 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006 and in different versions, from local areas to the whole of Canada. Numerous products related to the index are available online free of charge. RESULTS: The index has been used extensively in the field of health and social services, mainly in the province of Quebec but also elsewhere in Canada. It has had four main uses, all related to public health: describing geographic variations of deprivation, illustrating inequalities in population health status and in service use according to deprivation, supporting the development of health reports and policies, and guiding regional resource allocation. These applications are facilitated by a close partnership between the producers and users of the index. CONCLUSION: The deprivation index is a marker of social inequalities in health. It allows for monitoring of inequalities over time and space, and constitutes a useful tool for public health planning, intervention and service delivery.

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An area-based material and social deprivation index for public health in Québec and Canada.

– Oral epidemiological research into the social determinants of oral health has been limited by the absence of a theoretical framework which reflects the complexity of real life social processes and the network of causal pathways between social structure and oral health and disease. In the absence of such a framework, social determinants are treated as isolated risk factors, attributable to the individual, having a direct impact on oral health. There is little sense of how such factors interrelate over time and place and the pathways between the factors and oral health. Features of social life which impact on individuals’ oral health but are not reducible to the individual remain under-researched. A conceptual framework informing mainstream epidemiological research into the social determinants of health is applied to oral epidemiology. The framework suggests complex causal pathways between social structure and health via interlinking material, psychosocial and behavioural pathways. Methodological implications for oral epidemiological research informed by the framework, such as the use of multilevel modelling, path analysis and structural equation modelling, combining qualitative and quantitative research methods, and collaborative research, are discussed.

The social determinants of oral health: new approaches to conceptualizing and researching complex causal networks

How do objective and subjective assessments of neighbourhood influence social and physical functioning in older age? Findings from a British survey of ageing.

Changing places: do changes in the relative deprivation of areas influence limiting long-term illness and mortality among non-migrant people living in non-deprived households?

This is my third, and final, Progress in Human Geography review paper for population geography where I turn to mortality the third of the core areas of the subdiscipline. There has, it seems to me, been a gradual decline in interest among population geographers in the geography of mortality. This is not to ignore some important and interesting mortality research conducted by population geographers but it is evident that, compared to migration research, interest in mortality has diminished. Thus, in perusing the back issues of the International Journal of Population Geography (now Population, Space and Place), I find only seven articles which focus explicitly on mortality in the last nine years (Garrett and Reid, 1995; Root, 1999; Gupta and Baghel, 2000; Ramiro-Farifias and Sanz-Gimeno, 2000; Congdon et al., 2001; Reher, 2001; Mooney, 2002) and most of these are historical or based in the developing world. This is despite the fact that there is a number of contemporary mortality-based research questions that should fall much more squarely within the interests of population geographers. One outcome of this declining interest is that many of the contemporary geographical studies of mortality are being conducted by health geographers (or epidemiologists or medical sociologists) rather than population geographers. This seems appropriate, given the strong relationship between health and mortality, but it is relevant to note that population geographers continue to focus on mortality as an 'event', which may be counted in a life table, or contribute to a demographic forecast or estimate, and seem to have been less interested in considering mortality in the context of morbidity or illness. For example, population geographers have been less concerned with the apparently widening gap between better-off and worse-off areas (and people) that has become a major focus in health geography. I would suggest that this is an area of research which should equally be at the heart of population geography for a number of reasons and, in this review, I aim

Population geography: migration and inequalities in mortality and morbidity

This article describes the establishment of the Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS). The study is similar in design to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Longitudinal Study (LS), which has been running for over 30 years and the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (NILS), which has been established only recently. However, the SLS differs from the LS and NILS is a number of ways. Subsequently, we describe the details of the SLS, paying particularly attention to how it compares with the LS upon which is was

Cohort Profile: The Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS)

Small area analysis of sociodemographic change over time is often impeded by the changing configuration of census zones for each decennial UK census. Approaches for matching zone configurations exist, but these typically require population estimation techniques, which inevitably involve some error. Because of the postcode-based geographical zoning system used in Scottish censuses, it is possible to create a local-area geography which is consistent for recent censuses. Here we present a methodology used to create three sets of consistent areas through time (CATTs) that can be used for analysing comparable small area data output from the 1981, 1991 and 2001 Censuses.

Paul Boyle

Papers

Selective migration, health and deprivation: a longitudinal analysis.

Changing places: do changes in the relative deprivation of areas influence limiting long-term illness and mortality among non-migrant people living in non-deprived households?

Population geography: migration and inequalities in mortality and morbidity

Cohort Profile: The Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS)

The creation of 'consistent areas through time' (CATTs) in Scotland, 1981-2001.