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The Commission for Rural Communities
State of the countryside 2010
Dr Allan Tennant reports
13th of July 2010
The Commission for Rural Communities has published this report on the 6th of July 2010. the organisation is a statutory body funded by government to help ensure that policies, programmes and decisions take proper account of the circumstances of rural communities in England. They are required to have a particular focus on disadvantaged people and areas suffering from economic under-performance.
In previous reports they have highlighted the under funding of rural health.
The chapter on health starts on Page 58.
In the report they suggest that patient assessment of health varies little between urban and rural areas. They identify income as a determinant of rural health saying, "The relationship between better health and income could explain why fewer people in poorer rural areas such as Lincolnshire and the Fens, the North East, Cornwall, the Isle of Wight and East Kent report that their health is good "
While the weighting of funding by age and sex tends to favour rural areas (because the population is older) the weighting for income tends to favour northern rural areas and urban areas, while the costs of provision weighting strongly favours urban areas . The overall effect of this is that urban areas tend to receive higher funding per head than rural areas, except for more peripheral poorer rural areas such as Northumberland, Cumbria, Cornwall and East Kent.
People in rural areas tend to take more exercise.
The age profile of different areas means that there are a higher proportion of older people living in rural areas. So although rural people tend to have healthier lifestyles the prevalence of many diseases associated with ageing is higher, particularly sparse rural where rates are the highest.
Dispensing doctors should refer to this report when discussing rural health and dispensing cross subsidy with their elected representatives.