Social Inequity and Health: From the Environment to the Access to Healthcare in Composite Indicators, the Portuguese Case

ABSTRACT

The relationship between social inequity and health and healthcare is a priority and recurrent issue in health policy. It has been aggravated by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic outbreak worldwide, which, in turn, is likely to impact citizens’ quality of life. Such an effect implies the revision of the agenda for 2030. This chapter analyses the inequity and the social-economic impact of health in theoretical terms. It uses the Portuguese case for measuring the quality of life, which is of utmost importance for many policy purposes. One can understand the quality of life in municipalities as the outcome of both local and global policies in a panacea of fields, including access to health and education, purchasing power, quality of the environment, and security, to name a few. However, little is known about the quality of life in Portuguese municipalities, neither the contributions of environment, energy, and health, among other aspects, to this field. This study aims to use robust benchmarking methods with statistics on the various criteria underlying quality of life to construct composite indicators associated with the latter. We expect to establish a link between aspects like environment and access to healthcare and education. Besides, this model should be replicated in other countries in the future, allowing the comparison of quality of life before and after the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic outbreak. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.