EASTERN LIVINGHealth in urban and rural community in the East of England

 John Stevens, University of Essex

Introduction

This paper provides details of the analysis of my surveys. The results

of the survey reports that access to health care is broadly similar

between the 2 environments where as access to work and community

facility's differ.

Access to Health care

The first subject investigated was the provision of health care in the

East of England. The data has allowed investigation of whether the

provision of health care is more limited in rural communities than

urban communities. Rural respondents reported travelling 2.4 miles to

see their GPs; while, surprisingly, urban respondents reported having

to travel 2.5 miles to do so. However, this situation was reversed with

hospital provision. It was reported by rural respondents that they had

to travel 7.2 miles to get to their local hospital; while urban

respondents reported a distance of 4.6 miles. Regarding emergency

provision, the East of England Ambulance Trust has a published aim

of responding to incidents with a paramedic car within 8 minutes and

an ambulance in 19 minutes, in both urban and rural locations. They

report this aim is achieved on 70% and 92% of occasions respectively

(Trust 2013). So in this respect, services were equal for both urban

and rural inhabitants.

Community Facilities

The next results of the survey to be examined are concerned

with the available facilities reported by urban and rural

respondents. For example, 89.3% of rural respondents reported

having a pub within one mile of their home, while this figure was

89.1% for urban respondents. Of rural respondents, 76.8%

reported having a Post Office within 1 mile, while this figure

rose to 85.9% for urban respondents. Regarding the presence

of a local shop within one mile, 87.5% of rural respondents

reported having one; however, 100% of urban respondents

reported having such an amenity within this distance. Only

39.3% of rural respondents reported having a petrol station

within one mile, while this figure was found to be 81.3% in the

case of urban respondents. There were no comments made

about losing petrol stations but numerous complaints in the

media about the loss of post offices and pubs. I conclude that

people residing in rural areas are not using local facilities but

wish those facilities to be positioned nearby as a service in case

they need to use them; therefore I can only assume that such

amenities are closing due to being financially unviable and

unable to compete with large supermarkets in near-by towns.

Access to Work

The next question is, ‘Do people in rural communities have less

access to work?’ The survey revealed that 96.4% of rural

respondents reported being in employment, while 96.9% of

urban respondents reported working; this is a statistically

insignificant difference. The average (mean) distance to work

for rural respondents is 9.7 miles, compared to 3.6 miles for

urban respondents. This finding seems in keeping with the

common sense assumption that a person who lives in the

countryside may be required to travel further for work.

Health and Human Sciences