A four page leaflet has come through my door – Stockport health profile 2010.
There’s a lot in there – so I’ve scanned it in and you can click on the four links below for more detail.
Some points I took from it:
- Stockport, as we know, is a borough of great contrasts, from the wealthier areas like Bramhall to the more deprived such as Brinnington (these most deprived areas are ones you’ll sometimes hear referred to as “priority 1”). Men in the least deprived areas can expect to live almost 10 years longer than those in the most deprived areas, women over 7 years longer.
- Like the country as a whole, fewer of us are dying early from heart disease, stroke or cancer and we’re all living longer than before.
- The report compares how well children of different ethnic backgrounds do at school. The figures look like Stockport students of white, mixed, asian and chinese/other ethnic groups all do better than the English average, whilst black children do a bit worse. However, be careful with these figures. The numbers for non-white children are very low: indeed only 27 black children took GCSEs last year here (compared to nearly 3,000 white children) and when you’ve a small sample size, the figures become less trustworthy.
- Our children, overall, are a little less physically active than the average and have more tooth decay. Our adults smoke less, binge drink more, exercise a lot less but are actually a good deal slimmer than the average across the country. I’d be interested to see whether, across England as a whole, there’s a correlation between healthy eating, exercising, moderate drinking and being slim, because these figures aren’t showing one here.
- Almost the whole of Gatley is in the second least deprived quintile: we’re not the most well off 20% but we’re in the next 20% (on average, across the area). The only exception to that is the area around Lorna Grove, Dingle Grove, Winsor, Clifton and Wilcott which come out in the third quintile (i.e. average for the country).
- Cheadle’s more mixed. The west and south parts (around High Grove Road, Broadway, Schools Hill) are in the second quintile like most of Gatley. The area north of the High Street, around Lime Grove and Hall Street are third quintile – average for the country. The Oak Road estate (around Oak Road and Brookfield Road) show up as being in the bottom quintile – the most deprived 20%. The figures show that people in that area will, on average, live several years less than those living elsewhere.
Stockport health 2010 page 1
Stockport health 2010 page 2
Stockport health 2010 page 3
Stockport health 2010 page 4
Not exactly citizen friendly but an interesting report. It must have cost a lot of our council tax to produce. Will any action be taken as a result? Will we be able to identify that action in relation to the report? Will we be able to see a cost benefit analysis? Somehow, someone needs to show us that some people are living longer, happier lives as a result of this expenditure. If not, then we are simply generating statistics to keep statiticians in a job.
As far as I know, Les, it didn’t cost a penny of our council tax to produce – it’s from the NHS and Dept of Health so it comes from some other taxes we all pay.
You’re right – it’s not much use unless it’s acted on but rest assured that a lot of work goes on to do just that.
Councillors even get to play a role in that – I’ll be at the Health Scrutiny committee next Tuesday looking at how we can improve health outcomes in our area – and to do that we need to have the evidence of what’s currently going right and wrong.
Very helpful response, Iain.