The main goal of this article is to publish the distribution of ‘avoidable’ deaths in mainland Portugal, thus laying the groundwork for future research which may contribute to fine-tuning methodologies and scales of analysis. It is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the relevance of research into changes in health status and, specifically, the use of the causes of ‘avoidable’ deaths as an indicator to assess the geographical changes in health and health care. The second part covers the spatial distribution of ‘avoidable’ mortality in mainland Portugal during the period from 1989 to 1993, signalling trends in the sensitive indicators of medical care, disease prevention and health promotion and indicating “areas of concern”.

keywords: health inequalities; health variations; “avoidable” deaths; egional variations in “avoidable” mortality; geography of health.