Using spatial analysis to predict health care use at the local level: a case study of type 2 diabetes medication use and its association with demographic change and socioeconomic status.

Local health status and health care use may be negatively influenced by low local socio-economic profile, population decline and population ageing. To support the need for targeted local health care, we explored spatial patterns of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) drug use at local level and determined its association with local demographic, socio-economic and access to care variables. We assessed spatial variability in these associations.

Including the smoking epidemic in internationally coherent mortality projections.

We present a new mortality projection methodology that distinguishes smoking- and non-smoking-related mortality and takes into account mortality trends of the opposite sex and in other countries. We evaluate to what extent future projections of life expectancy at birth (e 0) for the Netherlands up to 2040 are affected by the application of these components. All-cause mortality and non-smoking-related mortality for the years 1970-2006 are projected by the Lee-Carter and Li-Lee methodologies.

Effects of the fertility transition on birth seasonality in the Netherlands.

Synchronous with the decline in fertility that took place in the post-war period in the Netherlands, patterns of birth seasonality changed as well. In this paper seasonal fluctuations in fertility in the Netherlands are examined using population register data for the period 1952 to 2005. The peak in births has changed from spring to summer and subsequently to August/September, thereby shifting from the European to the American pattern.