Blackpool has more avoidable deaths than anywhere else in England and Wales,official data show.
The seaside town has more than three-and-a-half times as many preventable and treatable deaths than the affluent Hampshire area of Hart,which has the fewest.
There were 133.2 so-called avoidable deaths in Hart per 100,000 people,data show,between 2000 and 2022. Blackpool had 455.3 such deaths.
Avoidable deaths are defined as either preventable or treatable for those aged under 75 and include some cancers,drug and alcohol-related deaths and some types of respiratory and cardiovascular disease.
Preventable deaths account for around two-thirds of this figure.
Treatable deaths are sometimes used as a proxy for the effectiveness of an area’s healthcare systems because they could have been avoided through “timely and effective healthcare interventions”.
The 10 worst places in England and Wales,according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) data,are dominated by the north with Manchester,Hull and Liverpool behind Blackpool.
Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent are fifth and sixth and the worst spots in Wales,with the bottom 10 rounded out by Middlesbrough,Blackburn and Darwen,Salford and Knowsley.
The 10 places where a person is least likely to suffer an avoidable death are dominated by the south and areas around London.
East Hampshire,Richmond upon Thames,Uttlesford and South Hams make up the top five alongside Hart,followed by South Cambridgeshire,Elmbridge,Wokingham,Winchester and Mid-Suffolk.
The ONS figures reveal that the disparity between the healthiest and unhealthiest regions is growing.
Between 2001 and 2003 the difference between the healthiest (Hart) and least healthy (Manchester) was a factor of 2.5. This has now grown to more than three-fold.
Experts say that this is caused by a general worsening in public health over the past decade with life expectancy going down and the number of avoidable deaths up from pre-pandemic levels.
Avoidable deaths from cancer are at an all-time low,which Dr Scally attributed largely to an ever-dwindling number of lung cancer deaths as a result of plummeting tobacco smoking.
“There are big geographical variations and that is because well-off people live in healthy places,” he said.
Prof Martin McKee,professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,said: “These findings are shocking,if unsurprising.
“The gap between the best and the worst has widened. Areas especially badly affected are in parts of the Midlands,East Anglia and Wales.
“These are often places that have been left behind,suffering the loss of traditional employment.
“They include places like Walsall,that have struggled to attract employment in the post-war period,but also coastal towns that have never recovered from the growth in foreign holidays,like Blackpool and Great Yarmouth.”
He said the data expose the Government’s levelling up agenda as a “failure” with the UK enduring the biggest economic gap between its provinces and capital in all of Europe.
“It is difficult to see how this will improve as many of these places have entered what is,in effect,a doom spiral,” he said.
Both experts warned that the loss to overall public health is more heavily felt by poorer areas but this could be addressed and fixed if there was enough political will.
“I’m disappointed that none of the political parties have spoken about the health of the population getting worse and life expectancy falling,” Dr Scally said.
“They are not recognising that we are in the middle of a really serious public health crisis which is a crisis with implications for the economy.
“It is important they do because we are falling behind internationally.
“You won’t have healthy high streets or a healthy economy without healthy back streets.”
© OfficialAffairs
