Health inequalities have continued to rise in the East Riding, with the gap in life expectancy between those living in the most and least deprived areas growing and overall life expectancy declining.
Male life expectancy has fallen from nearly 81 years in 2019 to just under 78 years in the latest data. For women the figures have fallen by one and a half years over the same period to 82 point two.
East Yorkshire's Director of Public Health - Andy Kingdom - says there are also big variations in life expectancy within the county resulting from health inequalities.
A report presented to East Riding of Yorkshire councillors this week said:
"Life expectancy in the East Riding decreased between 2019 and 2020 for both males and females and decreased again between 2020 and 2021. By 2022, we would expect life expectancy to be (at best) the same as it is now, but more probably it will worsen (i.e. years of life expectancy will continue to reduce)."
Data for the the 3 most recent years of life expectancy shows male life expectancy stands at 77.8 years down from 80.7 and female life expectancy is at 82.2 years down from 83.8 but the data suggests the figures remain ahead of the all England average.
Between 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2021, life expectancy reduced by 2.9 years and 1.6 years for East Riding males and females respectively. (2021 is not yet available for England overall)
But the changes in life expectancy are not the same across the East Riding. The counties director of Public Health - Andy Kingdom - says there are variations based on health inequalities.
The data shows that male residents living within the most deprived 20% of communities (‘Band 1’) experienced the largest drop in life expectancy between 2017-19 and 2019-21 at 1.1 years, in contrast to the least deprived band which saw a reduction of 0.2 years.
Whereas, East Riding females in the 2nd most deprived band are shown to have the largest reduction in life expectancy at 1.1 years, compared to the least deprived band whose life expectancy increased by 0.3 years.
Andy Kingdom believes the way to tackle East Yorkshire's health issues involves lookign at areas outside the health service itself to tackle some of the causes of poor health including the quality of housing
Andy says diet and exercise are also important in improving health outcomes and says measures need to be taken to help people eat more healthily and to remove barriers to people taking more exercise.
In his report entitled "SocioEconomic Impacts of Changes to Health Services and Health Inequality in the East Riding" Andy Kingdom says:
"Within the Council there is the potential and the ability to shape the conditions of living and therefore the impact on health and health inequalities."
"There are a diverse range of social, economic and environmental factors which impact on people's health, including amongst others transport, education, employment and housing. Medical care itself is estimated to account for only up to a fifth of modifiable contributors to healthy outcomes for a population, the rest is related to conditions of living and these are things which can be influenced and shaped by partners in the East Riding system (e.g. providing better opportunities for economically inactive residents). "
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