EASTERN LIVING Health in urban and rural community in the East of England John Stevens, University of Essex Introduction This paper provides details of the analysis of my surveys. The results of the survey reports that access to health care is broadly similar between the 2 environments where as access to work and community facility's differ. Access to Health care The first subject investigated was the provision of health care in the East of England. The data has allowed investigation of whether the provision of health care is more limited in rural communities than urban communities. Rural respondents reported travelling 2.4 miles to see their GPs; while, surprisingly, urban respondents reported having to travel 2.5 miles to do so. However, this situation was reversed with hospital provision. It was reported by rural respondents that they had to travel 7.2 miles to get to their local hospital; while urban respondents reported a distance of 4.6 miles. Regarding emergency provision, the East of England Ambulance Trust has a published aim of responding to incidents with a paramedic car within 8 minutes and an ambulance in 19 minutes, in both urban and rural locations. They report this aim is achieved on 70% and 92% of occasions respectively (Trust 2013). So in this respect, services were equal for both urban and rural inhabitants. Community Facilities The next results of the survey to be examined are concerned with the available facilities reported by urban and rural respondents. For example, 89.3% of rural respondents reported having a pub within one mile of their home, while this figure was 89.1% for urban respondents. Of rural respondents, 76.8% reported having a Post Office within 1 mile, while this figure rose to 85.9% for urban respondents. Regarding the presence of a local shop within one mile, 87.5% of rural respondents reported having one; however, 100% of urban respondents reported having such an amenity within this distance. Only 39.3% of rural respondents reported having a petrol station within one mile, while this figure was found to be 81.3% in the case of urban respondents. There were no comments made about losing petrol stations but numerous complaints in the media about the loss of post offices and pubs. I conclude that people residing in rural areas are not using local facilities but wish those facilities to be positioned nearby as a service in case they need to use them; therefore I can only assume that such amenities are closing due to being financially unviable and unable to compete with large supermarkets in near-by towns. Access to Work The next question is, ‘Do people in rural communities have less access to work?’ The survey revealed that 96.4% of rural respondents reported being in employment, while 96.9% of urban respondents reported working; this is a statistically insignificant difference. The average (mean) distance to work for rural respondents is 9.7 miles, compared to 3.6 miles for urban respondents. This finding seems in keeping with the common sense assumption that a person who lives in the countryside may be required to travel further for work. Health and Human Sciences