Better Health For All

The purpose of the Public Health Dashboard (PHD), developed by Public Health England, is to support local decision-making by bringing existing comparative data into one place and making it accessible and meaningful to a wide audience. Its development is part of a wider Government drive to support transparency and local accountability for delivery across all public services and not just public health.

The PHD contains data on public health service areas that local authorities lead. These include mandated functions. The majority of data included in the PHD is already in the public domain, but by summarising the data the dashboard will help stakeholders understand how local authorities compare to one another. The PHD provides a summary of data in seven service areas: best start in life, child obesity, drug treatment, alcohol treatment, NHS health checks, sexual health services, and tobacco control. Alongside these is a single headline indicator on air quality. The dashboard is aimed at local decision-makers, such as senior council officers, to help inform their investment decisions and better support them to prioritise resources when it comes to improving the public’s health.

Tools like the PHD will be especially needed once the public health grant ring–fence is removed, to help non-public health professionals make good public health investment decisions. It is also intended that members of the public, the voluntary sector and service providers will use the dashboard to learn more about service provision in their area and how it compares to other areas.

The dashboard was released in ‘shadow’ form in October 2017, prior to a more formal release in July 2018. During the shadow period PHE invited feedback on the tool. Users suggested that data on the wider determinants of health would be a useful addition to the tool. At this time the Faculty also contacted PHE to discuss how we could work together to help develop the tool further. PHE and the Faculty agreed that the wider determinants was an important area that we could collaborate on.

It was agreed that we would seek views on the addition of the wider determinants through a survey, which the Faculty publicised to their members. We also jointly hosted two workshops to discuss the results in more detail. Working with the Faculty allowed us to do something far more user-centred i.e. ensure that we were able to speak directly to potential users of the tool and those who are responsible for local decision making.
Being able to tap into the expertise of the Faculty in running these types of events has been extremely beneficial. By being able to send out the questionnaire to all of their members, a far larger and more diverse audience was potentially able to participate.

Instead of those we traditionally seek views from (for example public health analysts) we were able to access people working in all areas of public health. Additionally, the Faculty’s endorsement of the Dashboard as a tool that could be used to facilitate discussion on investment in public health services with local decision makers is also extremely beneficial, as is the interest that they have helped to generate in the tool.

Over the course of two afternoon workshops in London and Birmingham, vibrant discussions were had with an extremely engaged audience. Participants were able to express their views and discuss the pros and cons of adding wider determinants into the Public Health Dashboard, the specific indicators themselves, and feedback on the tool itself.

The work is complex, but the workshops proved fruitful in providing some guidance as to what users find useful and would like to see. Work will now be undertaken to consolidate the outcomes of these discussions, with a view to creating a number of options for further discussion. Collaboration will continue with the faculty to share these options and seek further feedback and implementation into the tool in due course.

Written by Nicholas Coyle, Principal Public Health Analyst, Public Health England