As the UK’s National Statistical Institute, we are thrilled to be hosting this year’s UK Health Camp, supporting data driven decision making across the health and care sectors.
Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being at all ages is essential to sustainable development, so it is no surprise that the United Nations made it one of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) an action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.
At the Office for National Statistics (ONS) we have been set the challenge for sourcing and reporting the data for the UK to monitor our progress against all of the Global Goals.
Goal 3 “Good Health and Well-being” has 27 indicators to address key global health-related issues such as: maternal mortality; HIV; incidence of diseases; suicide; family planning; impact of air pollution; and spending on health care. To date, major progress has been made in improving the health of millions of people, increasing life expectancy, reducing maternal and child mortality and fighting against leading communicable diseases. However, progress has stalled or is not happening fast enough with regard to addressing major diseases, while at least half the global population does not have access to essential health services.
Finding the data for each of the indicators has not been easy – and even though we now have data for 74% of these we are still working hard to find data for the remaining 26%. To fully recognise the opportunity the SDGs offer to understand issues affecting the UK and the World, we need help identifying new data sources that will enable us to monitor the UK’s progress, and research that digs beneath the UK headline to explain the impact on individuals.
This is where you come in. As experts in your field, working in health and social care, you can help us tap into additional data sources or show us where there are evidence gaps. The richness and diversity of the SDG data provides an exciting and unique frame through which to look at the inter-relations between areas. For example how does climate change impact health? Are the impacts of climate change on health experienced equally across different groups – gender; geographical location; education; income band etc? We are starting to explore these inter-relationships and find the inequalities that underlie the UK headline figures and would be interested in your thoughts and feedback.
UK Health Camp 2019, will be our first and hopefully prove to be the start of some fruitful relationships. We are looking forward to an exciting day of learning, sharing and discussing with you all, come and say hello to us, and help us achieve our goals.