Use of the term ‘postcode lottery’ and its meaning has changed dramatically over time, UK study shows

New analysis reveals the concept of the “postcode lottery” was first utilized in 1997 to precise concern about how entry to Nationwide Well being Service (NHS) medicine and remedy assorted from place to put. However its that means has since broadened to incorporate regional inequalities in state companies usually, and even in poverty and life expectancy.

When austerity insurance policies had been launched in 2010, “postcode lottery” tales declined as information tales centered extra on decreasing the general public monetary deficit than on inequalities.

However because the impression of austerity insurance policies mounted, the phrase was more and more utilized to struggling public companies past well being care. As an alternative of tales specializing in people and their entry to particular remedies, the media paid extra consideration to regional “postcode lotteries,” evaluating the standard of well being companies extra usually.

The research was carried out by Grace Redhead and Rebecca Lynch from the College of Exeter. The paper is printed within the journal Well being & Place.

Dr. Redhead mentioned, “It would really feel to us as if the phrase has all the time been round, however that is not the case. We now have proven the way it goes out and in of trend and the way its utilization has modified loads over time.

“The ‘postcode lottery’ means various things to totally different folks. Some teams have talked in regards to the danger of a ‘postcode lottery’ to attempt to shield the NHS and the concept of common public companies. However different folks have pointed to the ‘postcode lottery’ as proof that universalism is unimaginable, and to justify NHS reforms. It is a helpful time period for either side as a result of it compels a lot outrage, however it’s not particular about the reason for the issue.”

Researchers analyzed newspapers’ use of the time period between 1997 and 2023. The idea of an “NHS lottery” or a postcode lottery for well being companies first appeared in newspapers within the mid-Nineties and adopted the creation of the NHS “inner market” in 1989–91. These reforms meant that the companies obtainable to sufferers may range relying on the place sufferers lived. Widespread information protection of the reintroduction of the Nationwide Lottery in 1994 meant that quickly folks began to speak a few lottery in well being care.

Dr. Lynch mentioned, “The favored slogan for the Nationwide Lottery, ‘It could possibly be you,’ was repurposed into anxieties about well being care entry—that ‘it could possibly be you’ who will get substandard well being care. However whereas the winners and losers of the Nationwide Lottery are decided by likelihood, the causes of regional inequality in well being and well being care are complicated and deep-seated. It isn’t about luck—it is in regards to the larger image of financial inequality and geographic disparities in funding in well being and social care.”

Researchers warned that typically the worry of a “postcode lottery” has been used to criticize further state funding or tailor-made well being companies in additional disadvantaged areas.

The earliest use of the time period “postcode lottery” that the researchers might discover was in a September 1997 Night Customary article a few “postcode lottery” for most cancers medicine, which reported that an oncologist had falsified a girl’s deal with in order that she might entry the brand new most cancers remedy Taxotere. This was adopted by a November 1997 Every day Mirror article, reporting on the “postcode lottery” case of two girls who lived 20 miles aside in Somerset and Avon, of whom just one might entry the drug.

The time period was shortly picked up in different information tales about sufferers who could not entry remedies corresponding to IVF, or the MS drug beta-interferon, which had been obtainable in neighboring well being authorities. Well being charities and politicians started to speak about “postcode lotteries” of their campaigns.