Scottish Government

Title

Healthy Life Expectancy ( HLE) in deprived areas.

Associated Targets

Increase Healthy Life Expectancy at birth in the most deprived areas.

Brief Description

Years of expected life in good health for people living in the most deprived 15% of areas in Scotland.

Strategic Objective(s) to Which Indicator Relates

This indicator informs progress in relation to the Healthier Strategic Objective.

More Detailed Definitions

Definitions of Keywords

HLE at birth is a measure of the number of years of expected life from birth in good health.

Life Expectancy (LE): The average number of years that a new born baby would live if they experienced the age-specific mortality rates for the area, for the time period used, throughout their life.

Healthy Life Expectancy (HLE): The estimated average number of years that a new born baby could be expected to live in 'good health'. The discrepancy between healthy and total life expectancy, therefore, indicates the average number of years likely to be spent in 'poor health'.

15% most deprived areas as defined by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation ( SIMD) 2006.

Evidence Source

Data sources: Produced by the Scottish Public Health Observatory (ScotPHO) within the Information Services Division ( ISD) using General Register Office for Scotland ( GROS) population estimates and death registrations, General Household Survey/Scottish Household Survey data on self-assessed health and Scottish Government for SIMD.

Improving HLE is a top Government priority, combining the impact of progress across most of the proposed Supporting Outcomes, and indeed the high-level 'purpose'.

Focussing on deprived areas reflects the major inequality issue and the commitment to address this specifically.

Baseline and Past Trends

The baseline is 2005/2006 - 60.4 years for women and 57.3 years for men.

Methodology for Data Source

GROS mid year small area population estimates

GROS death registrations (using year of death, not registration).

Sample survey data - self-assessed health reported as good or fairly good from the Scottish Household Survey.

Index of various data for SIMD.

HLE is derived by combining estimates of life expectancy ( LE) with data on self-assessed health (from surveys). LE calculations are based on the Chiang (II) methodology; HLE based on the Sullivan method.

Estimates of HLE are less robust than estimates of LE due to the use of survey data; the fact that health status is self-assessed brings in an element of potential bias to the estimates.

HLE estimates have much wider confidence intervals than LE estimates.

A small proportion of death records (0.7%) could not be assigned to a deprivation category and have therefore been imputed.

The self-assessed health data only covers ages 16+. Therefore the results for the age group 16-19 are applied to all age groups below 16. This approach, the relatively small numbers surveyed within an age/sex category, and the variability of the self assessed health estimates over time, have led to the apparent rise in HLE for females in the 15% most deprived datazones in 2001-2002 compared to 1999-2000 and to 2005-2006.

Data Ownership and Quality Assurance

The individual elements which feed into this measure are National Statistics but the measure itself is not. Data are owned by the Information Services Division.

Publication of Data

In December 2008, ISD updated and expanded the HLE topic on the website of the topic on the website of the Scottish Public Health Observatory (ScotPHO). Data will be updated on ScotPHO website in December each year.

http://www.scotpho.org.uk/hle

Methodology for Recent Change Arrow on Scotland

This evaluation is based on: any difference in the combined percentage change for both sexes within +/- 1.0% of the previous figure suggests that the position is more likely to be maintaining than showing any change. A combined increase of 1.0% or more for both sexes suggests the position is improving; whereas a decrease of 1.0% or more suggests the position is worsening.