Data story: Using the Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF) to work on joint public health outcomes in Cambridgeshire

The Government’s Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF) sets out the desired outcomes for public health and how they should be measured. The PHOF focuses on two high-level outcomes covering life expectancy and reducing inequalities in life expectancy.

A supporting set of public health indicators in the PHOF (http://www.cambridgeshireinsight.org.uk/health/phof) are split over four areas:

• Improving the wider determinants of health
• Health improvement
• Health protection
• Healthcare public health and preventing premature mortality

In Cambridgeshire we have produced a local PHOF summary.

WHAT DATA DOES THE CAMBRIDGESHIRE PHOF SUMMARY USE?

Most of the data are drawn from Public Health England’s PHOF data tool at http://www.phoutcomes.info/. In Cambridgeshire we produced a local summary of the PHOF indicators in an easy-to-read visual overview. The summary helps to increase local relevance, to highlight sub-county inequalities and to identify potential focus areas. For some indicators, we sourced more recent data, additional district-level data or proxy data for indicators where data are not currently presented in the national tool.

ANNUAL PUBLIC HEALTH REPORT

Following this, the Director of Public Health made the PHOF the focus of her annual report. http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/2944/annual_publi….

USE AND IMPACT

The public health outcomes framework was used to inform the priorities of Cambridgeshire County Council’s Health Committee. The local PHOF summary and the annual public health report were used as a starting point to discuss shared outcomes with other council teams. Through this work we:

• Identified priority areas and gained high level agreement to promote shared priorities work using the PHOF.
• Created a process for working up actions and developing further measures on shared priorities with other council departments.
• Are currently agreeing shared public health outcomes to be implemented from the 2015/16 financial year.

OPEN DATA

The Government’s PHOF data tool is available at http://www.phoutcomes.info/ and allows users’ to download the data directly.

FURTHER LOCAL HEALTH RELATED DATA TOOLS AND OPEN DATA

Further health related data and mapping are available within Cambridgeshire Insight, allowing users to explore population health In Cambridgeshire in more detail than that available via the PHOF indicators. The Cambridgeshire Public Health Atlas is an example http://atlas.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/Health/atlas/atlas.html

RESOURCES

For further information, contact:

David Lea or Jon Moore, Cambridgeshire County Council Public Health Intelligence Team.

Tel: 01480 379494 or 01223 715304.

Email: [email protected]