Neighbourhood deprivation monitoring in Rotterdam and London: exploring barriers to evidence-based policy and practice

There is ample evidence that area-based approaches to tackling health inequalities, as part of a wider policy of community regeneration, are effective. Nevertheless, embedding this evidence in the routine practice of health professionals has not followed automatically. One of the barriers to the uptake of research is the process by which evidence is generated and its usability, or “stickiness”. This paper draws on the concept of stickiness to explore the role of deprivation monitoring data in creating an evidence base for neighbourhood health policies and intervention. The study was undertaken as part of a Knowledge Exchange Programme aimed at sharing learning to improve the participation and health of disadvantaged people in deprived neighbourhoods in Rotterdam and London. The two cities are similar in that they both have highly diverse populations and government health and social policies that employ area-based approaches to tackle deprivation. Documentary analysis and in-depth interviews with health professionals and policymakers in the two cities have explored the construction of health policy, the congruence between data on deprivation and the contextual experience of practitioners, and the factors that influenced the usability of the data.