Key Health Data for the West Midlands 2001
Preface
Preface
This is the fourth edition of Key Health Data for the West Midlands. KHD is published by the Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, but is entirely dependent on the active input of other agencies. This year's edition has involved on the collaboration between Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, West Midlands Public Health Observatory, the West Midlands Perinatal Institute and the West Midlands Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre. It also depends on the active assistance of the Police, NHS Trusts, Department of Health, and Royal College of General Practitioners.
Contemporary Public Health employs a wide definition of health, Key Health Data reflects this spectrum reporting not just on the measurable mortality and morbidity but also the social and economic impacts that effects a person's well being. The philosophy is to signpost reliable health, health care, environmental and social information and to highlight the variation across the West Midlands. Its purpose is not to determine the cause or to provide 'league tables' of ill-health, but rather to promote the widest possible debate and to encourage active collaboration. We attempt to provide locally relevant information at useful levels of disaggregation. In this year's report we have concentrated on producing data for the new PCTs and StHAs.
Key Health Data 2001 has chapters on the delivery of healthcare in regard to the targets set in 'Our Healthier Nation' and at a regional level with access to particular services, such as tertiary operations, Accident and Emergency and mental health services. For the first time we have included a temporal element with regard to the effect that winter has on health. Throughout these sections we have sought to introduce data on primary care services when available. This year's report also updates work undertaken in the previous reports (Key Health Data 1998) on perinatal mortality and communicable disease. The wider determinants of health are reflected in three chapters covering housing, crime and sport facilities. The last chapter draws together a wide range of actors to describe in greater detail the determinants of health in the early years of life.
We hope that you will find Key Health Data a useful resource and the authors would welcome any feedback.
Andrew Stevens
Professor of Public Health
Department of Public Health and Epidemiology
University of Birmingham
May 2002
For more information please contact Carol
Richards on 0121 414 3368
© Department of Public
Health and Epidemiology, University of Birmingham