We saw this pattern for inequalities related to household income, parent education, employment, and lone parenting. children had worse mental health than children from other ethnicities before the pandemic, and this inequality widened during the pandemic. If you are interested to read more about these results, this blog goes into greater detail, and the preprint is available here.
Since joining Glasgow, the largest project I qatar rcs data have been part of has been a policy facing report, funded by the Health Foundation, describing trends in health inequalities in Scotland over the last 20 years. This was a very broad report, covering all parts of the life-course (not just childhood), and encompassing inequalities in the timing and cause of deaths, morbidity, health behaviours and health service uptake. We started with a large scoping exercise to see what data was available to monitor health inequalities in Scotland. We drew heavily on administrative data sources such as hospital records, and the Scottish Health Survey, but also more specific datasets like the Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey (SALSUS) which focuses on adolescent health. At the start of the project we also contacted experts and stakeholders representing local and national policy making, the NHS, health advocacy groups and academics, who were incredibly helpful in shaping the content of the report and the way we decided to present the data.