Pressures on our NHS are in the news these days, with much attention to the existence of 'Health Inequalities'. There is also, I hope, an emerging recognition of the distinction between 'inequality' and 'inequity', a distinction too often forgotten. In our local area a general 'inadequacy'  of service levels may risk everyone's needs going unmet. 

All these demand research, based on good data, at various levels and  across a wide range of criteria.  Responding to a 2018 proposal from the Chief Medical Officer, an ONS initiative set out to develop the  Health Index for England (HIE)  which provides numeric values, all referenced against a base value for the whole of England in 2015 set at 100.   

The attached HIE flowchart diagram shows the 14 'subdomain' indicators that ONS construct (from 50+ separate public domain data sources, see HIE Contents and Definitions), grouped in the Healthy People, Healthy Lives and Healthy Places domains, then combined to give an overall HIE value.

The attached 'Place Level Health & Wellbeing Data' PDF summarises the HIE context, provides a table comparing overall Health Index values for the 8 HWNN geographies, and provides subdomain level scores for Newark & Sherwood, sorted best to worst. 

HIE is potentially useful for PCN level analysis - especially when HIE's rich health & wellbeing data structure for the “determinants of health” is applied at LSOA level as in Northumbria. Data down to Local Authority level is available for the whole of England.