Volunteered Geographic Information

I have had an abstract accepted for an oral presentation at PopFest 2009. The title of my talk is “Demographic Change in General Practice Patient Populations: a Study of Southwark, London.”

PopFest is a population studies conference that is specifically aimed at and organised by postgraduates. I hope it will be a good opportunity to discuss issues concerned with measuring and analysising changing populations with researchers outside of the arena of geography. I will be a great opportunity to engage with social policy and demography and draw out their opinions and assess how they interact with and relate to geographic study.

My abstract for the presentation is as follows:

The predominant literature in geographies of healthcare point to health as being subject to a ‘postcode lottery’- that is your access to, and quality of, care is primarily related to where you live- this has led to a greater reliance on geographic indicators of deprivation of patients by postcode than perhaps it ought to. Recent targeting techniques in health proved to be more effective when also accounting for wider contextual information including: the ethnicity composition, neighbourhood characteristics, patient demographics and a range of other social and economic population attributes shown to be linked to health.

This study focuses on General Practices and an analysis of registered patients, collected through a national but locally managed information system, ‘Exeter’, which records new patient registration in real time. The study integrates patient demographics from ‘Exeter’, a derived ethnicity classification from ONOMAP based on the registered patient data, as well as neighbourhood characteristics from the ONS Output Area Classification and CACI’s Health Acorn with health prevalence data reported at the GP level via the NHS Quality and Outcomes framework (QoF).

The research asserts that the patients themselves, particularly in Southwark where geographic access to healthcare is less of an issue, at times make specific choices related to which General Practice to use based on preferences for a certain type of doctor, service, or community. Thus healthcare service provision at the GP level should be understood both in terms of who and where, moving away from the strict imposition of a ‘postcode lottery’ to a more patient focused understanding.