A study of the socio-demographic and socio-economic factors related to risk of avoidable and preventable deaths in Northern Ireland.

This study will use the Northern Ireland Mortality Study (NIMS) to examine the socio-demographic and socio-economic determinants of deaths occurring in the five/six years following the 2001 Census that can be defined as ‘avoidable’. This follows on from (and builds on) an extensive review of the topic area by ONS (Wheller L, Baker A, Griffiths C, Rooney C, 2007), and will examine ‘avoidable mortality’ within a Northern Ireland context.

Deaths from ‘avoidable causes’ can be divided into two important subgroups, neither of which have received much, if any, attention to date in Northern Ireland:

(a) ‘mortality amenable to health care’ – deaths that should not occur in the presence of effective and timely health care; and

(b) ‘preventable mortality’ – deaths that can be considered preventable through effective use of public health measures.

The study will use these causes of death to explore the relationship between them and the set of baseline socio-demographic, socio-economic and areal characteristics of the Northern Ireland population as captured at the 2001 Census.

Publications: 

Gallagher, N., Cardwell, C., Hughes, C. & O’Reilly, D. (2014) ‘Increase in the pharmacological management of Type 2 diabetes with pay-for-performance in primary care in the UK’ Diabetic Medicine. 

Other Outputs:

Gallagher, N. Increase in the pharmacological management of Type 2 diabetes… Diabetic Medicine, 32, 62-68. Phd Thesis. School of Medicine, Queen’s University Belfast, 2012.