erpho e-newsletter - February 2012
Welcome to our monthly e-newsletter, providing links to all the latest outputs from erpho (the East of England Public Health Observatory), the network of Public Health Observatories in England, and other partners. Please cascade to relevant contacts in your organisation.
Erpho monitors the health of the population of the East of England and helps the NHS and other organisations ensure that decisions and actions taken to improve health are supported by sound data and information.
We have a decade of experience in analysing and interpreting population health data for the NHS, DH, local government and academia.
Contact us by for more information on our health intelligence resources, commissioning support and consultancy services.
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Commissioning intelligence
Substance misuse profiles update in Fingertips
Health inequalities profiles update in Fingertips
Child health in the East of England: JSNA resource pack collection
National General Practice Profiles: Data download now available
Kidney Disease QOF Toolkit—January 2012 update
New Self Assessment Tool for Acute Paediatric Services
Diabetes Community Profiles
Attribution dataset GP registered populations scaled to ONS population estimates, 2011
Must-Knows on Health and Wellbeing from LGID
Quality intelligence
Quality Accounts Workshop
Population health intelligence
Marmot health inequality indicators updated
European Health Profile Tool
Obesity and Alcohol – An Overview
Deprivation and Death: Report on variation in place and cause of death
Place of death data from erpho
HSUG response to House of Commons Health Committee Inquiry into Public Health 2011
Mortality statistics
ONS Lifestyles Surveys Consultation Review runs until Friday 23 March 2012
Transition update
Public Health England
Hospital Episode Statistics
PHOs’ National Work Programme
Training, development, workshops and seminars
The Future of Children's and Young People's Mental Health Services: Best Practice Exchange
NHS Institute free web seminars for NHS staff during March
Understanding Cancer: Oncology Training for NHS and Public Health Non-clinical Staff
Erpho’s Foundation course: Health intelligence for commissioning
New substance misuse and health inequalities profiles released in Fingertips:
Substance misuse profiles
New annual data for 2011 is released today in the Substance Misuse section of Fingertips from erpho; new 2011 PDF profiles can be downloaded for each DAAT area.
Health inequalities profiles
Indicators for the period 2008-2010 have been uploaded and released today for the most up to date picture of health inequalities across the East of England. Trend graphs now cover the period 2005-07 to 2008-10 and inequalities plots show how the gaps between the most-deprived 20% and the rest are changing in each PCT or top-tier authority.
Other updates include indicators in the health and wellbeing, child health and adult social care sections. There is also a new version of the downloadable user guide.
Remember to follow Fingertips on to hear about the next data updates and other upgrades.
Child health in the East of England: JSNA resource pack collection
New from erpho : An introduction and series of briefings on data sources around child health, for those compiling and using Joint Strategic Needs Assessments. The resource pack draws on the JSNA Data Inventory and existing data resources to identify areas of child health need in the East of England and to show where more detailed information on key topics can be found. The pack includes a series of briefings and supporting data. The aim is to help local areas in telling the local story about child health in their area and agreeing priorities for action. The collection so far includes: Introduction; No. 1: The child population; and No.2: Social and place wellbeing and its impact on child health.
National General Practice Profiles: Data download now available
The data download button is now available on the practice profiles tool, allowing you to export the data at practice or larger scale for local use and further analysis.
Kidney Disease QOF Toolkit—January 2012 update
This is an updated version of the toolkit from NHS Kidney Care. The changes since the last toolkit are:
- The data have been updated to include the 20010/11 QOF figures.
- To reflect emerging changes in commissioning and planning services, the available comparison groups have been amended to include SHA, PCT and LA and, for the first time, PCT cluster and CCG.
- Expected CKD prevalence calculated for every practice is now based on the latest Health Survey for England results (2009 and 2010 data combined).
New Self Assessment Tool for Acute Paediatric Services
These tools from the Child and Maternal Health Observatory (ChiMat) are for commissioners, clinical and managerial leads for acute children's services to assess progress against standards. They are based on the Royal College paediatric service standards. They cover Paediatric Surgery and Anaesthesia and Care of the Acutely Unwell Child.
Diabetes Community Profiles
The Yorkshire and Humber Public Health Observatory has updated the Diabetes Community Profiles with data for 2010/11; a profile for each PCT in England can be downloaded as a PDF. They bring together a wide range of data on diabetes in adults into a single source for the purposes of benchmarking, to provide an overview of the key areas of diabetes care and to highlight issues for further investigation.
Attribution dataset GP registered populations scaled to ONS population estimates, 2011
The Information Centre has just released this publication about at Strategic Health Authority (SHA) and Primary Care Organisation (PCO) level in five-year age bands by gender, for England and Wales. The data was collected in April 2011 for GP relevant populations.
Must-Knows on Health and Wellbeing from LGID
Councils can have a tremendous impact on health – through sports, open space, housing, planning, social care and a range of other services. However many members are largely unfamiliar with the territory of health services. These are designed to provide the key information that local government elected members need, in bite-sized chunks. Each one is arranged in four sections: Why is this important?; The role of the local authority; Key tasks for elected Members; and Useful links: where to find out more.
Quality Intelligence East (QIE) is the East of England’s quality observatory, hosted by erpho.
Quality Accounts Workshop - Monday 5 March 2012
Quality Intelligence East will be hosting a Quality Accounts Workshop on Monday 5 March at NHS East of England, Victoria House, Cambridge.
Led by Richard Wilson from West Midlands QI, the workshop will highlight examples of both good and poor data presentation, and provide hints and tips on how to present data. It will be of interest to those drafting the Quality Accounts and others involved in data presentation to boards and public.
For more information email
Marmot health inequality indicators updated
In February 2010, Fair Society, Healthy Lives recommended action that emphasised the importance of tackling social inequalities in reducing health inequalities – a so-called ‘social determinants’ approach to preventing ill health. The UCL Institute of Health Equity commissioned the London Health Observatory to update the key indicators used to monitor health inequalities, first published in February 2011. The figures for this year show that life expectancy has improved in most local authorities. However, they also show that the gap in life expectancy between the wealthiest and the most deprived areas has widened for both males and females in the majority of England’s local authorities. The update also reveals around a three per cent improvement across England as a whole in the percentage of children achieving a good level of development at age five. Your feedback on the Marmot indicators would be very useful. Please take a few minutes to complete the online survey. Alternatively, comments and queries are welcome at
European Health Profile Tool
presents data from the Health Inequalities Indicators in the Regions of Europe (I2SARE) project, through interactive maps and charts. The purpose of the tool is to aid the comparison of health and socio-economic indicators across regions of Europe. See also the key messages about the East of England in comparison with European regional statistical neighbours.
Obesity and Alcohol – An Overview
This from the National Obesity Observatory aims to provide a brief overview of current understanding of the key issues related to obesity and alcohol in the following areas:
- Alcohol consumption and energy intake
- Patterns and levels of drinking
- Alcohol, obesity and liver cirrhosis
- Alcohol dependency and obesity
- Obesity, alcohol and gender
Deprivation and Death: Report on variation in place and cause of death
People who live in deprived areas are more likely to die in hospital than those living in affluent areas, says this new report from the National End of Life Care Intelligence Network (NEoLCIN). The report reveals that 61% of deaths among people living in the most deprived quintile (the poorest 20% of areas) occurred in hospital – compared with 54% among the two least deprived quintiles. It concludes that the gap is not solely accounted for by factors such as differences in the causes of death between social groups.
Place of death data from erpho
The latest quarterly data have been added to the place of death spreadsheets. Each file presents data at both PCT and LA level, but by a different indicator definition: by Public Health Outcomes Framework SQU02 or by NI 129.
HSUG response to House of Commons Health Committee Inquiry into Public Health 2011
This submission (by Margaret Eames, Sylvia Godden, Richard Willmer and Alison Macfarlane) is based on discussions at a workshop on the White Paper ‘Healthy lives, healthy people: our strategy for public health in England’, held on 25 March 2011, to inform the Health Statistics User Group’s response to the consultation on that White Paper and two related consultations on ‘Funding’ and ‘Transparency of outcomes’. The authors expressed a particular concern for Public Health Intelligence, which includes the data needed to inform the development of public health, the metadata which define the data and how they are derived and collected, and the staff who have the skills to analyse and interpret the data.
Mortality statistics
National Statistics has published 'Mortality in the United Kingdom - 2010'. This is a summary of the trends in age-standardised mortality rates in the UK and constituent countries, 1980 to 2010.
ONS Lifestyles Surveys Consultation Review runs until Friday 23 March 2012
Aimed at finding out more about the use of data from the ONS surveys:
- Health Survey for England – Health, Lifestyles and Social Care
- Smoking, Drinking and Drug Use Among Young People in England
- Infant Feeding Survey
For more information and to download the consultation document, go to the website.
Public Health England
The PHE Operating Framework outlines a tiered structure:
- 1 national office (London)
- 4 hubs (co-terminous with SHA/NCB hubs)
- Around 25 units (same footprint as existing Health Protection Units)
Functions will be split into:
- National – done once by the national office/hubs (national advice, national campaigns, performance management, etc).
- Distributed– done once and shared. Work could be done in any part/s of PHE but would be co-ordinated from a single point i.e. the same model that is currently used for the PHOs’ Health Profiles. Much of the PHE output will be delivered through this approach (Health Profiles, Practice Profiles, Public Health Outcomes Framework, etc).
- Replicated– standard set of functions that are replicated across several areas to cover the whole of PHE. Replicated functions cannot be scaled up to the national level and include data collection activity such as cancer registration and the national drug treatment monitoring service (NDTMS). The current (unofficial) view seems to be that there will be 7–10 replicated teams across PHE carrying out the replicated functions.
Erpho’s Director Julian Flowers is representing PHOs on the Interim Operating Group and is also part of the Replicated Team Advisory Group which is working on the function and form of the Replicated Teams. Erpho is therefore well represented in the process.
Analytical capacity within replicated teams will probably deliver both distributed and replicated functions. How this balance will work in practice (i.e. what flexibility there will be to provide a bespoke local service) is not yet clear.
Hospital Episode Statistics
For some time now erpho has only had access to the secure online HES system (via Citrix). Erpho is currently finalising agreement with PCTs on the components of a quarterly provision of HES standard outputs.
PHOs’ National Work Programme
The national work programme for 2012/13 is in development. Key outputs such as Health Profiles, JSNA dataset, National General Practice Profiles and other similar outputs look as though they will continue to be included for 2012/13.
The Future of Children's and Young People's Mental Health Services: Best Practice Exchange
National roadshow including half-day sessions in London on 20th and 29th March 2012. Aimed at CAMHS staff and commissioners for children in NHS and LAs, on how to make better use of the voluntary and community sector in the future delivery of mental health services for children and young people. This event will be delivered by BOND (Better Outcome, New Delivery), a new mental health consortium funded by the DfE. .
NHS Institute free web seminars for NHS staff during March
Two on Healthy Places, Healthy Lives Online and the next Expert On Call : 'Creating the culture for innovation in health services’.
Understanding Cancer: Oncology Training for NHS and Public Health Non-clinical Staff
This new e-learning tool is aimed primarily at Multi-disciplinary Team Co-ordinators and Cancer Registration staff who need to know about: cancer terminology, diagnostic tests and treatments; how cancer services are organised in the NHS; cancer types; the key risks including causes and risk factors; signs and symptoms, anatomy and physiology.
Other NHS staff can also use it to improve their understanding of cancer and cancer services. The training modules have been developed and reviewed by clinical experts in the field and the course has been approved by the Institute of Healthcare Management (IHM). For more information, visit the NCIN website
You can self-register on the learning space website, ready for the launch on 2nd April 2012.
Erpho’s Foundation course: Health intelligence for commissioning
Erpho is offering three two-day courses in 2012, all to be held in Cambridge: March 22 + 23, April 12 + 13 and June 21 + 22.
The course is free to attend for NHS, local authority and third-sector employees from the East of England. See the course website page for full details and a registration link.
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