Childrens' Hospital Admissions and Deprivation

Plummer, Richard (2000) Childrens' Hospital Admissions and Deprivation. MSc(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Two of the major recent concerns of the public health establishment and politics in general have been the existence of socio-economic and regional inequalities in health. These persist, despite a near unique infrastructure of health care provision, free at the point of access. Socio-economic deprivation is generally agreed to be the most pervasive nonmedical influence on health, but there is very little knowledge about the mechanism by which the two are linked. If the health of deprived groups is to be improved, a more detailed understanding of the way poverty affects health is needed. Much research has been undertaken in this area, some of which is detailed later in this review. One of the most significant theories of recent years is that health in later life is influenced very early in life, even pre-natally. This is part of the rationale behind basing this study around children's hospital records. There has long been an assumption in public health circles that the effect of deprivation is similar regardless of other features of an area. In actual fact, deprived areas are far from homogenous and examination of the variety of ways in which the health is affected by deprivation might illuminate how services could be improved. Are there, for example, areas where admission rates are low despite high deprivation? Are there particular areas of Scotland with a different pattern of admissions? Before arriving at a plan for studying such variation in children's hospital admissions, more detailed consideration of the possible influences upon them is needed. Socio-economic deprivation has already been mentioned, but other frequently studied factors include urbanicity, ethnicity and use of health services. There may also be other, less easy to define cultural or personal traits that predispose to or against frequent admission to hospital. As well as this, there is the nature of hospital services themselves, which vary from area to area in level and character of provision.

• Item Type: Thesis (MSc(R))
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Keywords: Public health, Health care management
• Date of Award: 2000
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2000-76024
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 19 Nov 2019 17:06
• Last Modified: 19 Nov 2019 17:06
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/76024