Scotland’s health in an international context
Comparing Scotland's health with that of other countries can give valuable insights and helps build a clearer picture of what's happening and provides possible routes forward for planners and service providers.
Current work
Updated data on long-term trends in mortality rates for Scotland compared with Western European countries, are now available on ScotPHO website.
These pages update earlier work detailed below.
'Scotland’s Health in an International Context'
David Leon, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, completed a report in 2002 for the Public Health Institute for Scotland – 'Understanding the Health of Scotland’s Population in an International Context'.
The report was split into two main sections and is available to download via the links towards the bottom of this page.
Summary
The report:
- Reviewed the key findings of studies that have attempted to describe and explain the health of the Scottish population in a European or global context.
- Produced an analysis of long-term trends and differences in mortality in Scotland and a number of relevant comparator countries.
Key Findings
The key findings were:
- Scotland’s health has not always been as bad compared with the rest of Europe as it is now. Therefore, there is nothing inevitable in our relative position.
- Our position in early life is nowhere near as bad as it becomes later in life, particularly amongst middle-aged men and women.
- Although Scottish men attract headlines for their poor health, Scottish women have the worst comparative position.
- Scotland performs relatively poorly in terms of treatment outcomes. These findings are more difficult to interpret but require careful scrutiny and further debate.
- The importance of smoking and the way in which the Scottish population adopt smoking (particularly women) is a very strong theme.
- There is potential for some more specific comparisons between Scotland and Finland. It should be emphasised, for example, that Scotland’s improvement in coronary heart disease is every bit as good as that of Finland.
- There are several causes of death such as cancer of the oesophagus, liver cirrhosis and suicide in men which have been increasing in the 1990s, contrary to the downward trend seen in most other European countries.
- There are European nations that are poorer than Scotland which enjoy comparatively better health. Therefore, it is not sufficient just to explain Scotland’s poor health status in a European context in terms of poverty. Nonetheless, poverty and relative deprivation emerges, unsurprisingly, as a key explanatory variable in much of the analysis.
This report is available in two parts by following the links towards the bottom of this page.