Irish health and lifestyle surveys show that medical card holders generally report lower levels of health and quality of life than non-medical card holders, a leading researcher told a conference in Cork on promoting health in urban areas yesterday.
Dr Cecily Kelleher, professor of health promotion at NUI Galway, said that socio-economic factors and whether people were eligible for a medical card revealed the greatest variations in people's self-reported levels of health.
"Self-reported levels of general health are much better for those who have not got a medical card. It is a matter of GMS/non-GMS status rather than where people live - whether in urban or rural areas - that show the greatest variation," she said.
Dr Kelleher was addressing a conference entitled "Making the Healthier Choice the Easier Choice: Promoting Health and Well-Being in an Urban Context". It was organised by the Northside Community Health Initiative (NICHE) - a community-based health/health promotion project involving the Knocknaheeny Family Centre and the Southern Health Board.
Among the programmes being promoted by NICHE are a lifestyle assessment programme for men, aromatherapy massage and acupuncture for women and physical activity and dental promotion schemes for adolescents and pre-school children.
Yesterday over 150 conference delegates, including many community activists and workers from voluntary groups in the Knocknaheeny-Hollyhill area, heard Dr Kelleher outline further the major variations in health and lifestyles.
Dr Kelleher said that over 80 per cent of people who completed national health and lifestyle surveys for adults and young people reported that they had good health and a good quality of life, and that did not vary much in Ireland according to region.
But, assessing the survey results according to whether the respondents were General Medical Service (GMS) card holders or not, a very different picture emerged, with distinct differences between the two groups, she said.
Non-GMS card holders reported better health (90 per cent) and quality of life (90 per cent) than card holders, who reported corresponding levels of 70 per cent for health and over 60 per cent for quality of life, she told the day-long conference.
"GMS status rather than location is the outstanding factor," she said, pointing out that the differences were reflected in such factors as smoking, physical exercise, rates of breast feeding and consumption of fruit and vegetables.
Opening the conference, the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, said it was important to realise that while the issues of hospital waiting lists and bed shortages had to be addressed, it was also important to develop longer-term health strategies.
He pointed out that heart disease and cancer remained, along with accidents, the main killers in Irish society, and strategies aimed at developing healthier lifestyles, such as that by the Northside Community Health Initiative, were very welcome.
Focusing on smoking, Mr Martin stressed that Ireland had achieved considerable progress in reducing smoking from 45 per cent of the population in 1973 to 28 per cent in 1993, though it had since risen again to a current level of around 32 per cent.
The urban consultant, Mr Jon Dawson, from Liverpool said that the consensus now in the UK was that if policy responses were to tackle health inequalities effectively, they must address social, economic and environmental factors that affected health.
