Response to "Jones L., Jones J., Martin C., Platt S., Response to Cross-sectional study of ethnic differences in the utility of area deprivation measures to target socioeconomically deprived individuals".

White Indian Pakistani Caribbean A recent response to our study (Social Science &Medicine, 2013; 85: 27e31) argued that differences in the clustering of ethnic minority populations is “a priori evidence” that area-based targeting would disadvantage ethnic minority groups in Scotland. The authors challenged the generalisability of our findings from England to the UK. However, there are a number of key issues in their response that merit further scrutiny. The principal aim of our study was to explore whether the use of area-based targeting in the general populationwould disadvantage ethnic minority groups. Area deprivation measures have been used as a proxy for individual deprivation in the targeting of public health interventions. It would be concerning if these measures were less effective at identifying individual deprivation in ethnic minority groups as targeted interventions could then systematically disadvantage these populations. We did not suggest that area deprivationmeasures should be used to specifically target deprived ethnic minority populations, as the authors appear to state.