Objectives: 1. To investigate health inequalities in the outlying towns around urban Granada. 2. To classify the towns in homogeneous groups according to their demographic, social and economic, and urban environment features, and to contrast these categories with their health situation.
Design: Ecological study using indicators of health and town environment from various sources.
Setting: The 29 towns in the periphery of Granada.
Measurements and interventions: The differences in health of the towns were compared among themselves and with the group formed by all of them together. Cluster analysis was employed in order to classify the towns into homogeneous groups.
Results: It is noteworthy that only two towns had overall and premature mortality rates above and below the group as a whole. We found marked differences between towns for the other health indicators, with difference ratios up to 6 times greater than the group as a whole, as was the case for incidence of Brucellosis. There were some towns with poorer general conditions on Health and Poverty indexes than the rest. There were 5 clusters or groups of towns with homogeneous characteristics, for which the ratios of all the health indicators of the group with the best conditions were higher than the ratios of the group with the worst conditions.
Conclusions: Better understanding of health inequalities at the small-area level, along with the use of health and poverty indices, help to characterise the place in question and favour the reduction of the inequalities.