Regional differences in health further explained

Abstract

Like in most Western countries, regional health inequalities are also present in the Netherlands. Explaining these inequalities is necessary for policymakers to target interventions to reduce them. Regional health inequalities are usually attributed to demographic and socio-economic factors, while lifestyle and psychosocial factors are increasingly shown to impact individuals’ health. Therefore, this study analyses the role of lifestyle, loneliness, and self-mastery in explaining regional inequalities, in addition to demographic factors and SES, for self-rated health, presence of chronic diseases, and psychological distress. Analyses are performed in the linked dataset from the Dutch Public Health Services, Statistics Netherlands, and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment for the year 2016 (n = 334,721). The results show that lifestyle, loneliness and self-mastery contribute to the regional health inequalities in self-rated health and presence of chronic diseases. For psychological distress, both loneliness and self-mastery contribute to the regional health inequalities. Addressing lifestyle and psychosocial factors can offer policymakers additional pathways to bridge regional health inequalities. In this study, the region of Zuid-Limburg represents the reference region. Use compare regions for health and healthcare costs (Regiovergelijker gezondheid en zorgkosten [1]) in order to select all other Dutch regions as reference region.