The GHS has included a series of questions about health and about the use of health services since its inception in 1971. Although periodic changes have been made to the content of the health section, it is possible to monitor changes in health over a period of almost 30 years. This chapter presents information on self-reported health and the use of health services. For the first time, questions have been included about practice nurses.

The Independent Inquiry into Health Inequalities and Our Healthier Nation highlight that health inequalities exist. The NHS plan gives priority to tackling this problem and sets two new national targets to reduce health inequalities in infant mortality and life expectancy. Tackling Inequalities - consultation on a plan for delivery builds on the NHS plan, to further develop ways of reducing health inequalities. The wealth of data provided by the GHS allows for health measures to be analysed with reference to other socio-economic factors, and for changes to be monitored over time (see section 7.4).

Many of the tables in this chapter refer to data on adults and children. Questions on health and use of health services are asked of all adults in the household aged 16 or over. For the majority of questions, information is also collected from a responsible adult about all children in the household. (For more detail, see Appendix F for the full questionnaire.)