GROWING health inequalities which mean children in the poorest areas are more likely to suffer from obesity and are at greater risk of infant mortality are a “national problem for Scotland”, researchers have said.
Dr Anna Pearce, an expert at the University of Glasgow, said the “widening of inequality” in some areas of children’s health was “worrying”, particularly as the financial situation for many families is expected to worsen.
Her comments came as a study carried out by the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit at the University of Glasgow revealed “stark and concerning data” – including that children living in deprived areas are 2.6 times as likely to die before their first birthday as children in less deprived areas.
While overall infant mortality has declined since 2000, the research showed a rise after 2014 in the most deprived fifth of areas.
With infant mortality continuing to fall in the least deprived 60% of areas, inequalities have widened.
Meanwhile over the the past decade, the number of youngsters at risk of childhood obesity has been rising in more deprived areas and falling in the least deprived.
At an overall population level, the proportion of children at risk of this has remained fairly stable over the past 20 years in Scotland.
But researchers said this situation “disguises potentially worrying differences across areas” – with risk of childhood obesity having fallen slightly in the least deprived areas and increased slightly in the most deprived areas.
By 2018-19 children living in the most deprived fifth of areas were twice as likely to be at risk of obesity, the research found, with an absolute gap of 7%.
The interim findings also showed increases in the proportion of two-year-olds who had not been immunised against measles, mumps and rubella in three of the five most deprived areas in Scotland.
Here the absolute gap between the most and least deprived areas had increased from 0.8% in 2014 to 4.5% in 2021, with relative inequalities doubling.
Since 2016 Scotland has not met the World Health Organisation target of having 95% of children immunised with the MMR vaccine by the age of two – with this currently only achieved in the least deprived 40% of areas.
Speaking about the findings, Dr Pearce, senior research fellow at the MRC/CSO Social said: “This widening of inequality in some areas of children’s health, including the risk of childhood obesity, is worrying, especially with families’ financial circumstances expected to worsen.”
