News

Public Health Observatory publishes regional health indicators

(19 July 2004)

The Association of Public Health Observatories of England and Wales (APHO) has published its second set of health indicators in England. The report focuses on local indications of health, the first concentrated on health at the regional level. This report published indicators of health at local authority level in England looking at public health in five categories.

These are:

. Population health status

. Priority public health interventions (screening and immunisation programmes)
. Effectiveness in partnerships (e.g. teenage pregnancy rates)
. Wider determinants and risk factors (deprivation, smoking obesity rates)
. Public health capacity (public health staff employed and in training)
These reports are intended to make data on public health easily accessible for the general public and policymakers. The reports are targeted at Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), Strategic Health Authorities, Regional Government Offices, Regional Assemblies and Regional Development Agencies. We also expect that local authorities will be very interested in this work, as will be their scrutiny committees. Because of data availability not every indicator is available at all geographical levels.

The key messages contained in the report are:

1. There is considerable variation in many health outcomes between local authorities. Much of this variation is linked with deprivation.

2. Mortality rates in England are generally declining. Improvement is ahead of targets set in 1997, although in some local authority areas the improvement has been slower.

3. Inequality in life expectancy is greater for men than for women. There are greater inequalities for circulatory diseases than cancer

4. Teenage pregnancy rates rose between 2001 and 2002. London achieved a lower than average improvement. Improvement was better than expected in the East Midlands. In all other regions the fall in teenage pregnancy rate was close to the national average.

5. Between 1994/96 and 2000/02 the rate of smoking fell from 31.9% to 27.6% in men and from 27.3% to 25.5% in women.

6. Between 1994/96 and 2000/02 the national increase in obesity was 5.6 percentage points (36% increase from the 94/96 level) for men and 4.4 percentage points in women (25% increase from the 94/96 level).

7. In 2000/02 the prevalence of obesity in men was high in the North East and low in London, and for women was high in the East Midlands and West Midlands and low in the South East and South West.

Professor John Wilkinson, the Chair of the APHO said, "This is a very important report setting out in a clear way the progress made to date to improve health in England and the problems which need to be addressed. There are some major problems to be dealt with, smoking and obesity continue to be serious problems in the country and continue to need to be tackled. This information is designed to point out to local people what the particular issues are in their own area in order that policy makers can be clear about the local priorities and the importance of a sustainable programme to improve health in every locality in the country."

Notes to editors

The full report can be downloaded from the APHO website www.pho.org.uk where links to regional public health observatories can also be found.
Public Health Observatories were established in 2000 by the Department of Health in England.
There are nine public health observatories in England and one in Wales, a population health observatory is also being created in Ireland.

For further information and comment Professor John Wilkinson can be contacted on 0191 334 0400.

Public health observatories remit is to:
. Monitoring health and disease trends and highlighting areas for action;
. Identifying gaps in health information; . Advising on methods for health and health inequality impact assessments;
. Drawing together information from different sources in new ways to improve health;
. Carrying out projects to highlight particular health issues;
. Evaluating progress by local agencies in improving health and cutting inequality;
. Looking ahead to give early warning of future public health problems.