Seasonal Morbidity and Housing
Lucy Telfar-Barnard. PhD research
Mortality studies have shown that increased winter mortality is not necessarily just about lower temperatures: Finland 1 and Siberia 2 have a relatively low winter to summer mortality ratio, while ratios in Portugal, Spain 1 and New Zealand 3 are relatively high: here, people have 28% more chance of dying in winter than in summer.
However, fewer studies have looked at winter illness (rather than death). Lucy will be looking at hospital admissions between 1980 and 2004 to identify which, if any, diseases, follow a seasonal pattern in New Zealand. She will follow this with a spatial analysis to see whether increased winter hospital admission rates are more pronounced in areas of poor housing.