Presentation at the Faculty of Public Health annual conference 2016

1. Florence Nightingale and
health statistics in 2016
Professor John Newton
Chief Knowledge Officer, PHE

2. PHE briefing for NIHR Board 2013

3. Florence Nightingale’s polar area
graph (1856)

4. Florence Nightingale as Statistician Author(s):
Edwin W. Kopf Source: Publications of the
American Statistical Association, Vol. 15, No.
116 (Dec., 1916), pp. 388-404

5. “The connection between the health and the
dwellings of the population is one of the most
important that exists.”
Florence Nightingale on the importance of
collecting housing data in the 1861 census

6. Does quantity have a quality all of its
own?
PHE briefing for NIHR Board 2013

7. The beauty and power of
descriptive data
PHE briefing for NIHR Board 2013 Source: Danny Dorling

8. One-year Survival by stage

9. y = 0.003x + 0.1241
R² = 0.57
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Obesityprevalence
IndexofMultiple Deprivation2010 score
(High score = more deprived)
obesity prevalence in children aged
10 years by deprivation
9
Child obesity: BMI ≥ 95th
centile of the UK90 growth reference
Local authorities in England

10. PHE briefing for NIHR Board 2013

11. 11
“The Global Burden of Disease
showed the position of health in
the UK and that while
comparatively there have been
a lot of gains, there is still a long
way to go….GBD exemplifies
the new paradigm in public
health. We’re not just looking at
one issue at a time anymore.”

12. PHE briefing for NIHR Board 2013

13. 13 BIA 2015
GBD: Leading causes of DALYs 1990 & 2013

14. PHE briefing for NIHR Board 2013

15. Figure 1
The Lancet DOI: (10.1016/S0140-6736(15)00128-2)
Risk factors currently included in
GBD

16. “We legislate without knowing what we are doing.
The War Office has some of the finest statistics in the
world.
What comes of them? Little or nothing. Why? Because
the Heads do not know how to make anything of them.”
Florence Nightingale in a letter to Benjamin Jowett
PHE briefing for NIHR Board 2013

17. Using data, information and technology
to make a difference in 2016
• Few care systems are truly data and information driven
• Senior managers have become used to managing
without timely and relevant information
• Information presented in an engaging and transparent
way is much more likely to be used
• Judgments on the balance between confidentiality and
use of data often seem arbitrary and approvals process
is burdensome
PHE briefing for NIHR Board 2013

18. Conclusions
• Data and information are interventions that save lives
and improve health
• Health sector has consistently underinvested in capacity
and capability for the use of data compared with its
generation and collection
• We have more data than ever before but it remains far
more difficult to get it and use it than it needs to be
• Projects such as the Global Burden of Disease have
shown that these problems can be overcome
PHE briefing for NIHR Board 2013