The Vision
Cheshire & Merseyside Public Health Intelligence aims to create a coherent and joined up approach to the prioritisation and delivery of a suite of intelligence products to support the Directors of Public Health, the Integrated Care Board (ICB) Population Health Board and Champs Public Health Collaborative work programmes.
By working together, it is hoped that value will be added to the work of individual organisations through professional support, sharing information and good practice so that we can act together to tackle the most important health challenges faced by our populations.
Why is it important?
The Government policy paper Data Saves Lives: reshaping health and social care with data builds on the key role that data played in the country’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic. It states:
‘We cannot deliver the change that we need to see – and our 10-year plans for cancer, dementia and mental health – unless we embrace the digital revolution and the opportunities that data-driven technologies provide. Giving front line staff, leaders and policy-makers easy access to the data they need to help the health and care system run as best it can.’
Intelligence should underpin all decisions on what we do as a public health function and monitor what impact we have made. As such it is a core public health duty.
- It includes ensuring access to necessary data, turning this into intelligence for decision-making. It supports across a full range of public health functions from action to tackle the social determinants of health, tackle both communicable and non-communicable disease by providing a picture of health, wellbeing and ill health across the life course.
- Not only is it important we improve overall health of our population but we must identify and measure health inequalities so programmes can target this unwarranted variation. Sections of our population often face multiple concurrent social and health challenges. It is important we are able to understand the inter-relatedness of these and find ways to monitor them.
- This requires that we work in partnership with colleagues in the ICB especially those involved in their business intelligence function, the NHS – hospitals, primary care, pharmacy and others – as well as colleagues in all parts of the local authority and those in the police, fire & rescue, other public sector organisations and partnerships, community & voluntary sector
What are we doing?
The work is led by Ifeoma Onyia, Director of Public Health for Halton, supported by Sharon McAteer (Halton), Sue Forster, Consultant in Public Health for Champs Public Health Collaborative and the Cheshire and Merseyside Public Health Intelligence Network. Strategic Intelligence as part of the Champs Public Health Collaborative, operates at a Cheshire & Merseyside level to support programmes of work such as:
- Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) prevention
- Reduction of Harm from Alcohol
- Suicide Prevention
- All Together Fairer
- Smokefree Cheshire and Merseyside
It also works with the wider Cheshire & Merseyside Integrated Care System (ICS) providing public health intelligence on an ongoing and ad hoc basis to a variety of partnerships.
Public Health Intelligence Network
The other side to the public health intelligence function is the public health intelligence network.
The network brings together colleagues from each of the nine local authority public health intelligence teams, OHID’s Local Knowledge & Intelligence Service (LKIS), UKHSA Knowledge & Library Service, ICB business intelligence (population health) and analysts from the Liverpool City Region. It aims to manage collaborative intelligence across Cheshire and Merseyside and to support priority work areas as identified by the collaborative. The network works closely with the ICB to develop population health intelligence, primarily through the ICB data platform CIPHA (Combined Intelligence for Population Health Action).
Until March 2020 the network oversaw a collaboratively commissioned service from Liverpool John Moores University. All the commissioned reports can be found here
From April 2024 the collaborative will commission the Trauma & Injuries Intelligence Group (TIIG), part of the Public Health Institute at Liverpool John Moores University
Leadership
DPH Lead
The Director of Public Health lead for Intelligence is Ifeoma Onyia
More information
Website
You can view the most recent reports commissioned through the Public Health Intelligence Network on their website