Child Health and Wellbeing

Contents

Community early years health profiles

Information and statistics about the health and wellbeing of early years children in the community you live in. We define early years as pre-birth – eight years old.

We know from research that the early years of life are very important in determining future health and well being of children as they grow into adults and into old age.

East Lothian population summary

Indicator Population Number Measure Scottish Average
1 Population aged <1 1,117 1.2 1.1
2 Population aged 1–4 4,773 4.9 4.4
3 Population aged 5–15 12,927 13.4 12.0
4 Population aged 16–24 10,605 11.0 12.0
5 Primary school pupils 7,414 7.7 7.1
6 Secondary school pupils 6,020 6.3 5.8
7 Minority ethnic groups 257 1.9 4.6
8 Live births 1,062 11.0 11.4
9 Children living in rural areas 8,529 29.5 17.3

Key East Lothian health statistics

(These statistics are from the 2010 Community health profile for East Lothian)

  • Low birth weight - the vast majority of children are born with a weight above 2500 gms and only 1.8% of births are below this in the low birth weigh category
  • Smoking in pregnancy - 13.1% of mothers were recorded as smoking during pregnancy
  • Breast feeding - approximately 1/3 of new mothers breast feed exclusively 6-8 weeks after the baby is born
  • Child Dental health in primary 1 - 71.8% of children have no obvious sign of decay in first year of primary school
  • Child healthy weight - the vast majority of east Lothian children are in a healthy weight range in the first year of primary school with 7.1% of children having a body mass index in the obese range.

You will find more information about health in East Lothian and Scotland as a whole on the Scottish Public Health Authority website.

The Health Scotland early years website has detailed information on children health
Parent friendly information - Ready Steady Baby and Ready Steady Toddler.