How can data tools be used to create a robust evidence base required for planning?

There are lots of available tools to help underpin the evidence base of a development plan and support strategic planning for a healthier food environment. Tools include:

1. The Public Health Outcomes Framework – examines indicators that help understand trends in public health at national and local authority level
2. Fingertips – Public Health data – makes the Public Health Outcomes Framework data available publicly at local authority level in Local Authority Health Profiles and designed to support Joint Strategic Needs Assessment
3. Local Health – quality assured small area health-related data visualised in maps, charts, area profiles, and reports.
4. The Strategic Health Asset Planning and Evaluation (SHAPE) Tool – assesses the optimum location of services to meet the needs of the population
5. Food environmental assessment tool (Feat) – assesses food retail accessibility

1)The Public Health Outcomes Framework

The Public Health Outcomes Framework is a data tool which uses indicators to show how well public health is being improved and protected (1). The framework is reviewed every 3 years to ensure it remains fit for purpose and meets user needs. Data is collated by the Department of Health and Social Care and updated on a quarterly basis.

The indicators are grouped under 5 domains:

A. Overarching indicators – 1) for increased healthy life expectancy and 2) for reduced differences in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy between communities

B. Improving the wider determinants of health– including indicators on school readiness, children in low income families, homelessness, and the percentage of the population affected by noise

C. Health improvement – including indicators on diet, excess weight in children and adults, physical activity and inactivity and smoking prevalence

D. Health protection – including indicators on mortality attributable to air pollution, population vaccine coverage and antimicrobial resistance

E. Healthcare and premature mortality – including indicators on infant mortality rates, proportion of five-year-old children with dental decay, under 75s mortality rates from a range of diseases and suicide rate

The Public Health Outcomes Framework, together with the Fingertips local health profiles (2), can provide local data to set out the position in the local authority area, alongside the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (covered in Week 3) and other locally collected data. It enables local authorities to benchmark and compare their own outcomes against the national average and other local areas and can be used to assess trends over time as well as for monitoring and evaluating the impact of local strategies and interventions.

2) The Strategic Health Asset Planning and Evaluation (SHAPE) Tool

The Strategic Health Assets Planning and Evaluation (SHAPE) tool is a web application that informs and supports the strategic planning of services and assets across a whole health economy. The SHAPE tool is free to local authority professionals with a role in public health or social care and NHS professionals (3).

The primary purpose of this tool is to help service commissioners assess the optimum location of services to meet the needs of the population. However, it can also provide data to construct a local evidence base for health facing planning policies and guidance due to its flexible geographies including postcode, ward and local authority. SHAPE links national data sets on clinical analysis, public health, primary care and demographic data with information on healthcare estates performance and facilities location. The application also includes a fully integrated Geographical Information System mapping tool and supports travel time analysis.

3) The Food environmental assessment tool (Feat)

The Food environmental assessment tool (Feat) is designed to enable exploration of the geography of food retail access across England, Scotland and Wales. It was developed for use by professionals in public health, environmental health and planning roles (4), (5).

The Feat tool can be used to provide local data on the food environment, including monitoring changes over time. This data can be used to:

• generate local evidence for the development of obesity strategies, local and neighbourhood plans, Joint Strategic Needs Assessments, and strategic planning documents
• support planning decisions and the appeals process
• compare food access between neighbourhoods, and understand which areas are changing
• target interventions and test the effectiveness of planning policies.

Many local authorities carry out food mapping studies as preliminary stages of policy and guidance development. This approach has been used when establishing exclusion zones and identifying clustering of less healthy retail outlets, for example hot food takeaways. Feat has been used to provide local and national evidence for significant increases in hot food takeaway outlets over time.

To begin to familiarise yourself with the Feat tool, please follow the link in the references below. You can also watch an introductory video via the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS5Xxov7PRQ.