Social marketing in action-geodemographics, alcoholic liver disease and heavy episodic drinking in Great Britain

This paper explores the use of geodemographic population classifications to identify and predict ‘hotspots’ of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) prone to greater than expected alcoholic liver disease. MOSAIC geodemographic codes were overlaid onto Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) for Great Britain. The HES data included gender, MOSAIC Type, MOSAIC Code, postal and local authority district, month and year of birth, ethnic origin, Primary Care Trust and GP code. Analysis demonstrated that some geodemographic classifications of the population were over‐represented for alcoholic liver disease episodes. These groups had low socio‐economic and socio‐cultural status, lived in areas of high deprivation and disadvantage. Manchester followed by Liverpool and Hull had the highest estimated patient group size in England and Hart, Surrey Heath and Wokingham the three lowest (indicating low expected levels of alcoholic liver disease compared with average). Analysis of the same data was also carried out at postcode level for Manchester indicating ‘hotspots’ for alcoholic level disease at street level. This analysis exemplifies the ways in which geodemographic data might be usefully applied to routine health service data to enhance service planning, delivery and improved targeting of information in harder to reach populations. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.