You cannot address health inequalities without looking at the social determinants such as education and employment skills. This applies at the individual as well as the neighbourhood level.

1. Health and Disability
deprivation in Southampton
By Gavin Barker

2. This map looks at health and disability
deprivation in Southampton
click image to access live map
• It ranks and scores tiny
geographical areas called Lower
Super Output Areas or LSOA’s
• Lower Super Output areas contain
approximate populations of 1,000 to
1,500 people
• An area is characterised as deprived
relative to other areas in England on
the basis of the proportion of people in
the area experiencing the type of
deprivation in question – in this case
health & disability

3. It also looks at health and disability deprivation in relation to
other dimensions or ‘domains’ of deprivation
There are seven domains of
deprivation
• Income
• Employment
• Education & Skills
• Health & Disability
• Living Environment
• Barriers to Housing & Services
• Crime
Different domains of deprivation are measured differently and for this reason you cannot
compare exact scores – but you can compare their decile rank.
It is useful to do this because health deprivation is affected by other issues that cannot be
addressed in isolation from each other. Let’s look at a few examples.

4. Health challenges that these individuals face are
interlinked to other urgent needs
Examples
• A single mother on anti-depressants
struggles to hold down a job while
balancing child care responsibilities
• A patient’s health deteriorates during a Health
long spell of unemployment. While he
has recently found a job, he fears he will
lose it if he takes more time out to attend
the diabetic clinic
• An obese patient whose housing
problems still haven’t been resolved is Employment Housing
given advice about healthy eating and
exercise.
Trying to address health issues in
isolation from other needs will not work.

5. What applies at the individual level
also applies at local area level
Health
Employment Housing

6. Key Challenges
SOUTHAMPTON

7. The health of people in Southampton is
generally worse than the England average.
Estimated levels 20.5% of year 6
of adult 'healthy children are
eating' are worse classified as
than the England obese
average
Key
Tooth decay
in children Challeng Levels of
are worse es teenage
than the pregnancy
English are higher
average
Smoking related
deaths are
significantly
higher
Source: Public Health
Observatories

8. Life expectancy is 7.7 years lower for men in the
most
deprived areas of Southampton compared to the
least
deprived areas*
* Same as the England average.
Based on the Slope Index of
Inequality published on 5th
January 2011

9. Child Poverty
• Southampton has a relatively high number of
children living in poverty compared to other
areas
• This is revealed in research by the charity Save
The Children which points out that in 2009, the
wealth of Britain’s one thousand richest people
rose by one-third to more than £333 billion. And
yet, in the fifth wealthiest country in the world,
1.6m youngsters in the UK live in
"severe poverty"
• The government's surveys defines severe
poverty as a household with half the average
income - for a family of four this would be pay of
less than £12,500.
• The definition also includes material deprivation.
For example, this would mean children were
unable to take a holiday or invite friends home
for tea and adults were not able to pay for
repairs to fridges or afford insurance
Save the spreadsheet
Links Children