Spatial Health Inequalities in Western Melbourne: An Analysis

This report examines spatial health inequalities in Western Melbourne, highlighting the significant disparities in health status across different socioeconomic groups. The study reveals that factors like socioeconomic status (SES) are major drivers of these inequalities, influencing mortality rates, morbidity, and overall health. The report further explores the impact of poor macro-social and economic policies, which fail to address health determinants, as well as the role of both causal and selection mechanisms related to access to essential resources. It concludes that discrimination and segregation contribute to the perpetuation of health inequalities. The report references studies by Badland et al. (2015, 2016) to support its findings.

Spatial Health Inequalities: Western Melbourne 1
SPATIAL HEALTH INEQUALITIES: WESTERN MELBOURNE
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Spatial Health Inequalities: Western Melbourne 2
SPATIAL HEALTH INEQUALITIES: WESTERN MELBOURNE
There is marked spatial health inequality in Western Melbourne across an array of health
status indicators that include mortality (all-cause alongside specific cause), health and life
expectancy, morbidity besides self-perceived health. Inequalities further exist in factors linked to
health that include health risk factors; attitudes, health knowledge, and behaviors; utilization or
health alongside preventive measures (Badland et al. 2015).
The drivers of spatial health inequalities in Western Melbourne include social gradient
which favors people in the higher up social class. SES remains the main predictor of health
outcomes since people with low SES tend to face higher inequalities. Low SES is driving higher
morbidity, higher mortality rates, and higher all-cause mortality rates and also connected to
higher risk behavior like smoking, poor nutrition, and lack of exercise. People with low SES
have the worst health status; gradient surge in health linked to rising SES status, which indicates
that an individual's place on SES grid influences his health.
Another driver of spatial inequality in health is poor macro social and economic policies
since health inequalities are highly embedded in both social and economic inequalities. Thus,
inequalities in health status between Western Melbournian groups are outcomes of causal chains'
running back into and from basic societal structures. Such chains of causation run from macro-
socioeconomic, environmental, cultural condition, via working and living conditions alongside
community and social networks, to individual lifestyle factors. All these layers of influence
interactions result in health status inequalities. Thus, poor upstream macroeconomic policies
interventions remain, influential drivers of health inequalities, since they have failed to address
downstream and midstream health determinants like health behavior (Badland et al. 2016).

Spatial Health Inequalities: Western Melbourne 3
Other drivers of health inequalities are both causal and selection mechanism because they
are linked to both psychological and material factors. This is because unequal access to material
factors essential for health like good housing, healthy food, adequate income, recreational
opportunities, and access to service exist in Western Melbourne.
In conclusion, it is true that we are segregating ourselves since people in high SES always
discriminate and segregate those in low SES, leading to sustained health inequalities in Western
Melbourne.

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References
Badland, H., Roberts, R., Butterworth, I. and Giles-Corti, B., 2015. How liveable is
Melbourne. Conceptualising and testing urban liveability indicators: Progress to date.
Melbourne: The University of Melbourne.
Badland, H., Davern, M., Villanueva, K., Mavoa, S., Milner, A., Roberts, R. and Giles-Corti, B.,
2016. Conceptualising and measuring spatial indicators of employment through a liveability
lens. Social indicators research, 127(2), pp.565-576.