Regional socio-economic context and health

The study examined the characteristics of people who reported their health as poor or fair in the Canadian Community Health Survey of 2000/01. The results expand on the conclusions of an article titled "The health of Canada's communities," released in The daily on July 4. That article found that self-perceived health status differed substantially between health regions and that regional socio-economic factors were clearly associated with average health status in each region. People living in large metropolitan areas and urban centres, where education levels are high, had the highest life expectancies in all of Canada. At the other end of the spectrum, people living in remote northern communities, where education levels are lower, had poorer health.

This new article examines the extent to which this regional variation is attributable to the composition of the population within each health region, rather than to the socio-economic context of the region.