Statistics

Investigation of Public Health issues involves the study of a wide array of themes:

Geographic scale of analysis Administrative or health geography at national, regional, local area, ward, super output area, education cluster, mental health LIT's, drug action teams.

Population profiles: Young people, older people, minority ethnic groups, migrants, working age, male and female.

Characteristics of geography: Deprivation, rural/urban, spearhead.

Determinants of health: Occupation, unemployment, income, education, housing, lifestyle (tobacco, alcohol, physical activity), access to health care, neighbourhood characteristics.

Health outcomes: Life expectancy, premature mortaility from major diseases (CVD, CHD, Cancer, Stroke), diabetes, long term limiting conditions, obesity, mental wellbeing.

As a result, sources of data to analyse Public Health issues are many and varied. There are however a selection of routine data sources which cover the majority of the data analysts needs. NEPHO aims to support data users in providing a central source for a pool of some of the more frequently requested statistics. PHINE also provides a forum for discussion and a guide to the source and analysis of some important statistics (JSNA, population, obesity, tobacco).

The North East Region has:

12 PCTs with a total population of 1247403 Males and 1308305 Females (2006)

Over 30% of people live in the 20 per cent most deprived areas in England (2005).

About 61% of children achieving at least 5 A*- C in their GCSEs (2006/07).

Average life expectancies of 75.8 years for men and 80.1 for women (2004-06).

National Statistics a source of many data sets covering the census, economy, population and neighbourhood statistics. It also holds a vast amount of descriptive and methodological information on the data it publishes: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/

Neighbourhood Statistics (NeSS) provides statistics for small geographic areas to inform policy and decision making: http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/

National Centre for Health Outcomes Development (NCHOD) a knowledge base holding a collection of numerous data, for example: hospital activity, life expectancy, mortality, vaccinations, disease incidence and prevalence and population estimates: http://www.nchod.nhs.uk/

NOMIS a source of labour market statistics eg Benefit claimants, Annual Population Survey (APS): https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/Default.asp

UK Data Archive holds data on a number of surveys including the Health Survey for England (HSE) and General Household Survey (GHS): http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/

Eurostat the source of european data covering the topics of health, economy, population, trade, environmnet: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/