Life Expectancy and Small Area Deprivation in New ZealandDate of publication: September 2001
One of the Government’s key goals is to reduce inequalities in health, education, employment and housing. The Ministry of Health is developing a framework to guide action to reduce inequalities in health, building on the New Zealand Health Strategy and the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000.
The framework proposes:
- intersectoral collaboration to influence the common social and economic determinants of health and other social outcomes
- specific action within the health sector itself.
The framework is supported by a monitoring programme for social inequalities in health. The first report of this monitoring programme was an overview, Social Inequalities in Health: New Zealand 1999, published jointly by the Ministry of Health and Otago University.
The present document extends and updates information in the overview report regarding deprivation gradients in mortality. A companion volume, Inhaling Inequality, to be published by the Ministry of Health later this year, provides estimates of the contribution of tobacco to these gradients.
Life Expectancy and Small Area Deprivation in New Zealand should be of interest to policy makers and their advisors, researchers and health professionals, and a wide range of community groups concerned with social inequalities in health. The ongoing monitoring process, of which this report is a part, should stimulate debate on the actions we must take to reduce the serious inequality in life chances so clearly demonstrated in this report, while simultaneously providing us with feedback on the success or otherwise of our efforts to do so.
Comments on the report are welcomed, and should be sent to:
Public Health Intelligence,
Ministry of Health,
PO Box 5013,
Wellington,
New Zealand;
or email martin_tobias@moh.govt.nz.
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