Irish have poor health record compared with European neighbours

IRISH people have poorer health than most of their European counterparts, one of Ireland’s leading experts on public health has claimed.

The bad health profile is the same both north and south of the Border, according to Dr Cecily Kelleher, professor of public health medicine and epidemiology in UCD.

Our biggest problems lie in cardiovascular disease and some cancers, says Dr Kelleher, in an address to be delivered at the second Population Health Summer School, which opens at UCC on Thursday.

“Their migrants abroad have an adverse health profile particularly in the UK and US, often persisting over two to three generations,” says

Dr Kelleher. professor of public health medicine and epidemiology in UCD.

Possible explanations, according to Dr Kelleher, include economic and social disadvantage, adverse lifestyle and genetic predisposition.

“While there have been health gains more recently, associated with improved socio-economic conditions generally, there is persistent evidence of disadvantage and widening class gradient associated with industrialisation and urbanisation,” she says.

Dr Kelleher, who is director of the National Nutrition Surveillance Centre and the National Health and Lifestyle Survey, notes that strategies to tackle poverty and disadvantage have focused internationally on psychosocial as well as material factors. There have also been moves to promote social capital and cohesion to address inequality.

“However, the Irish present a paradox in this respect in having traditionally many well-preserved features associated with these concepts, including large family networks, community participation, networking and church attendance, without apparently gaining in health terms,” observes Dr Kelleher.

This evidence and its policy implications will be reviewed, in the light of the ongoing work of the Health Research Board-funded Unit on Health Status and Health Gain, Dr Kelleher added.

The National Nutrition Surveillance Centre, established in 1992, is affiliated to the Department of Health Promotion at UCG.