Measuring the health of urban populations: what progress have we made?

This paper considers the progress that has been made over the past 15 years in establishing an information base for the measurement of health variations, and for the assessment of the health needs of vulnerable populations living in urban areas. Four small areas, two in Coventry and two in Leicester, were explored. An extensive exercise in data trawling was undertaken and the available data were examined. On the basis of this exercise, the findings and recommendations of a paper published 15 years ago were revisited to assess the extent of the progress that had been made in the development of appropriate data sources. It was found that considerable progress had been made in provision of data relating to health status and health determinants, but that knowledge of small area populations had failed to keep up with the changing demographic structures of recent years. As a consequence, the possibilities for the exploitation and interpretation of health status and health determinant data are limited. An approach to data collation which combines available quantitative and qualitative data sources is currently being trialled in one of the four areas studied. It is argued that this provides the approach that will be most effective for the foreseeable future.