{"id":61314,"date":"2015-10-13T09:08:39","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T08:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/samathieson.com\/sa-mathieson\/?p=61314"},"modified":"2018-08-30T15:50:35","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T14:50:35","slug":"glasgows-excess-mortality-blame-deprivation-and-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/samathieson.com\/sa-mathieson\/glasgows-excess-mortality-blame-deprivation-and-housing\/","title":{"rendered":"Glasgow’s excess mortality: blame deprivation and housing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guardian Healthcare Professionals Network has just published an article by me on cities, health and data.<\/a> This gave me the chance to revisit what has been a puzzle<\/a>: what is the cause of Glasgow’s excess mortality, which sees men there dying nearly a decade earlier than in the longest-living urban area in the UK (Kensington and Chelsea)?<\/p>\n

The Glasgow Centre for Population Health has been working to find answers, and it has a couple, provisionally. Firstly, it thinks that Glasgow’s deprivation is deeper than the data – which tends to measure whether people are below a threshhold (and therefore qualify for a benefit) – suggests. Secondly, it believes that Glasgow had a particularly bad legacy of poor post-war housing, such as the Red Road tower-blocks that the city attempted to demolish at the weekend<\/a>.\u00a0 There are other factors too.<\/p>\n

The way the centre researched this<\/a> is interesting – it compared Glasgow to Manchester and Liverpool, similar cities with similar problems but better health. It has also extended its comparisons internationally, through work with Gothenburg in Sweden; this accessible video provides a quick summary. There are some big differences, largely (although not entirely) in Gothenburg’s favour.<\/p>\n