Web site of the month: Fingertips: health and wellbeing indicators

Produced by Public Health England, the Fingertips site contains a broad selection of health profiles
containing a large number of statistical indicators across a range of health and wellbeing themes.

The profiles allow you to:

• Browse indicators nationally, regionally or down to individual CCG level
• Benchmark local data against regional or national averages
• Export the data 

The themes are organised by national public health priorities such as AMR (antimicrobial resistance), diabetes, mental health or sexual and reproductive health.

Local Health Profiles 2015 for Northamptonshire now available

Data for Northamptonshire

Public Health of England have published the Local Health Profiles for Northamptonshire. The
profiles draw together information which includes:

• An ‘At a glance’ summary description of people’s health in the area, which includes information on locally identified priorities
• Maps and charts showing how the health of the area compares to the national view and information on health inequalities within the local authority

The Health Profiles website also provides interactive maps and charts for users to create their own views of the data, and links to further supporting and relevant products.

You can find all of the profiles for Northamptonshire on the Health Profiles site.

Alternatively you can find the profiles for individual areas here:

• Corby
• Daventry
• East Northamptonshire
• Kettering
• Northampton
• Northamptonshire
• South Northamptonshire
• Wellingborough      

You can also find the updated Local Alcohol Profiles for England here.

Web site of the month: My NHS

My NHS

The Department of Health have just launched the My NHS service aiming to improve the transparency of health care related data by providing easy access to information about health and care providers. The site has quality indicators for:

• NHS (acute) hospitals 
• Social care data from local authorities
• Public health services delivered by NHS services in local authority areas
• Public health outcomes from local authorities

The data on hospitals gives a dashboard showing CQC rating, Friends & Family test score, A&E performance, mortality rating and more. You can also review trust efficiency, safety and food data (you can see the results for Northamptonshire's acute trusts here).

The social care data reviews quality of life. use of care homes and user/carer satisfaction (Northamptonshire data here)

The public health services section lists indicators for breast feeding, uptake of the NHS health checks, screening and vaccination rates (Northamptonshire data here).

Public health outcomes data includes preventable mortality, smoking rates, obesity and physical activity (Northamptonshire data here).

Much of the data can be downloaded in a CSV / Excel format for further comparison.

The site is very new and there are plans to further develop it based on user feedback and to add more information over time.

My NHS is a useful tool collating statistical health and care quality indicators data from a number of different areas and placing it together in a easy to access form.

Local health profiles for 2013 published

Public Health England have published details of the local health profiles for England. The profiles give a snapshot of health related issues for each county and local authority area.

There are also interactive maps on the site that show a number of different indicators, down to district level (and a guide is available to help you get the most from them).

Within each profile you can find information on:

• Social issues, including deprivation, crime education levels
• Children & young people's health, including alcohol, obesity and teenage pregnancy
• Adult health and lifestyle
• Disease and poor health
• Life expectancy and causes of death

You can find all the profiles for the different areas of Northamptonshire here.

Longer Lives - premature mortality data

The Longer Lives interactive atlas

The Longer Lives project from Public Health England makes mortality data available to everyone.

Currently the site focuses on the four most common causes of mortality in England – heart disease and stroke, lung disease, liver disease, and cancer.

The site enables the comparison of premature mortality data  between all local authority areas, but also between areas of a similar size and make up. The project is at an early stage and more data will follow, including data for county districts.

Longer Lives highlights inequalities in premature mortality across the country. It also aims to provide examples of interventions that have been effective at the local level in reducing premature mortality rates. Currently there is information on cancer, heart disease, liver disease, and lung disease with more to follow.

Northamptonshire currently ranks as worse than the national average (72 out of 150), but the picture is more mixed than the figures suggest, with heart and liver disease and stroke actually better than the national average, but cancer and lung disease worse.

Web site of the month: The NHS in Numbers

It is not always easy to find the statistical data you may want about the NHS. Often it is produced in a wide variety of formats and on a number of different sites.

Produced by the Nuffield Trust, the NHS in Numbers project  brings together  key performance and funding data from different sources and presents it using simple interactive charts. 

The information available includes:

• Expenditure
• Hospital activity
• Prescribing (including cost information)
• Performance (including waiting times, length of stay and mortality)
• Staffing and hospital beds

The data for the charts is drawn from official sources and they will be updated on an annual basis when new data becomes available. New charts may also be developed when different data sets become available.

Individual charts are available to download as .PDF or as an image in various formats. The NHS in Numbers is a really useful source of national NHS statistical data.

Web site of the month: Health Knowledge

Health Knowledge was created for people working in public health, but contains high quality learning resources that are of use to the wider health care audience.

The site hosts a Public Health Textbook which covers all relevant public health skills and competencies and is free to access (as are all the things on Health Knowledge).

You will also find a number of e-learning resources covering epidemiology, health information and statistical methods. Each comes with a pre-course assessment, learning materials and ends with a final assessment which is graded and can be printed off for recording against CPD.

As well as the e-learning content there is a section of interactive learning material which includes presentations with an audio element and other material such as videos and workbooks that walks users through each subject. Areas covered in this section include:

• Learning from Stakeholders
• Obesity Care pathway Support Package
• Screening

A highlight is the material on critical appraisal called Finding and Appraising the Evidence. These six modules provide a general introduction to critical appraisal before taking you through the process of how to find evidence, and then going on to look at different types of research, such as randomised control trials and finishing with how to make sense of the evidence, which looks at statistics and outcome measures.

Each section also ends with a quiz to test your learning and there are links to further resources. This is an excellent introduction to a complex topic and is highly recommended.

The real cost of alcohol: map of alchol harm across England

Photo by Richmeyer on Flickr

Treating the effects of alcohol abuse costs the NHS £2.7 billion each year (£34 million in Northamptonshire). Alcohol Concern have produced an interactive map of alcohol harm for England  showing how this occurs.

The map gives a breakdown of information on alcohol misuse by local authority area, including the number of people drinking too much, alcohol related hospital admissions and associated costs, mortality and more. Statistics are also broken down by gender and age and there is the facility to compare different areas.