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March 2013 (Volume 91)
Quarterly Article
Gerry McCartney
Alastair H. Leyland
Colin M. Fischbacher
Bruce Whyte
David Walsh
Diane L. Stockton
Oct 14, 2026
September 2026
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Frank and Haw (2011) devised a set of criteria that can be used to evaluate the utility of frameworks for monitoring health inequalities. They argued that a high-quality monitoring framework should ensure the completeness and accuracy of reporting, that the measures used should be reversible and sensitive to intervention, that the measure should be statistically appropriate, and that there should be no reverse causation between the proposed outcome measures and the markers of socioeconomic status. They applied these to the Scottish Government’s long-term monitoring framework for health inequalities (Scottish Government 2011) to highlight the potential pitfalls for policymakers. While we welcome their description of the Scottish Government’s measures as “state of the art” and recognize that there is always room for improvement, we disagree with some aspects of their appraisal of the Scottish monitoring framework, as well as the criteria they proposed. We contend that their application of these criteria to the Scottish example reveals some of the limitations of their approach.
Author(s): Gerry McCartney, Alastair H. Leyland, Colin M. Fischbacher, Bruce Whyte, David Walsh, and Diane L. Stockton
Read on Wiley Online Library
Volume 91, Issue 1 (pages 186–191) DOI: 10.1111/milq.12006 Published in 2013