Putting the data together to build the local evidence base

We know that planning and public health practitioners can find it difficult to identify relevant evidence, in an appropriate format, to support the planning process. However, as we have covered, good quality data is available from which a local evidence base can be constructed. This data should also be mapped to demonstrate the spatial links between the food environment, deprivation and obesity prevalence.

Local data can include:

• data on childhood obesity prevalence and trends (through the National Child Measurement Programme)
• data on weight associated long term health conditions (such as Type 2 Diabetes) across all ages (through the Public Health Outcomes Framework)
• levels of deprivation (through the Office for National Statistics) and where particular vulnerable and at-risk groups are located
• information on local health promotion activity, for example, healthy eating programmes in schools
• local food environment data, which includes the number of food retail premises such as hot food takeaways, and consideration of sources of healthier food, for example, supermarkets, grocers (through the Food environment assessment tool)
• the number of takeaways per head of the population, compared to national averages
• location of current food retail premises and areas of recent planning applications and decisions (over the past 3 to 5 years)
• location of schools or sites to be covered by the proposed policy
• community views on food availability, shopping centres, high streets or planning policy
• number of businesses and applications likely to be affected by a new policy

To understand how the evidence can be brought together to promote a healthy food environment, we will learn how Gateshead have used data effectively in the restriction of new hot food takeaways.