Category: News

Elizabeth Richardson presented our regional-level environmental deprivation work to the ScotStat Small Area Statistics event on 5^th October 2010.  The programme of talks can be found here, along with links to the talks: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/sns/SNSEve/051010SmallAreaStatistics

She gave a talk entitled “Multiple Environmental Deprivation in South Lanarkshire: Does It Influence Health?” which can be found here: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/sns/SNSEve/051010MultipleEnvDep

The event provided a useful overview of small area statistics in Scotland, including the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, the Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics web portal and a range of interesting talks from other users of the data such as ourselves.  Useful links were made with ScotStat, the Scottish Government, NHS Scotland and other users.  A key part of the day was a consultation on potential changes to Scotland’s key small area geography: the data zone.  The process involves trading off the advantages of maintaining comparable populations between the areas but also keeping the area boundaries consistent through time.

Dr Jamie Pearce was part of a team of researchers considering the impact of the  introduction of legislation in New Zealand that restricted the  places where people can smoke. The results of the study, published recently, suggested  that whilst the introduction of the smoking legislation has reduced  the rate of hospital admissions due to heart attacks, this effect  may be greater in males, older age groups and those living in more  affluent neighbourhoods. The research was published in the  Australia and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. Reports on the  findings have appeared on the BBC, ITV, national newspapers as well  as various international media outlets. For example, see:

BBC coverage

The paper itself can be found here