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Our healthier nation: This white paper set out the Chief Medical Officer’s plans to establish a network of regional public health observatories in England and Wales.
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Originally conceived as a virtual observatory with a coordinating research centre overseeing a number of health intelligence functions across London.
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LHO website: this image of the LHO's first website was retrieved from the internet archive at http://web.archive.org. The LHO pioneered a series of web briefings on key health topics in London.
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The LHO was established by Dr Sue Atkinson, Regional Director of Public health for London as one of eight initial PHOs. The LHO, with Dr Bobbie Jacobson as its Director, was first hosted by East London & City Health Authority and supported by a Board initially chaired by Anna Coote, Public Health lead for the King’s Fund.
The LHO logo was based on the round window at the LHO's first home with the King's Fund in Cavendish Square. -
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The first briefing published under the LHO name was Mapping health inequalities
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From 2001 to 2008, the LHO ran a number of courses on health impact assessment. These ranged from a one day introduction to a four day intensive course. The HIA project produced some key works including a guide to reviewing published evidence for use in impact assessment - this is one of the LHO's most downloaded reports, currently 3300 downloads at March 2013. The LHO also provided evidence on the health impacts of the Mayor’s strategies.
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Judith Hunt OBE is currently an executive coach and independent consultant. She served as Chair of the LHO Board from 2002-2006.
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North Central London SHA, based at Victory House, Tottenham Court Road, takes over as LHO host.
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Health in London reports were produced in collaboration with the London Health Commission and Greater London Authority. The series ran from 2002 to 2007.
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SKIL was initiated as a 5 year R&D programme to assist with the development and use of non-routine data. This event in March 2004 discussed using primary care data to improve public health and was attended by 60 people. SKiL developed a unique partnership with London’s private hospitals publishing ground-breaking reports on equity of access to cardiac interventions.
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Health intelligence network meetings, organised by the LHO since 2002, have helped build capacity. The first was an evening event with the theme of local health intelligence networks across the capital. To date the LHO has run 14 HIN meetings, each attended by upwards of 50 health intelligence staff from across London. The last two events were run in conjunction with CLARHC NW London and held at the Wellcome Trust.
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Missing record: the LHO has been a long standing advocate for improving the quality of recording and analysis of ethnicity data. This report marks a subsequently successful campaign to record ethnicity in vital statistics.
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Local basket of health inequality indicators (LBOI): now incorporated into NHS Information Centre indicator portal but the LBOI originally covered around 70 indicators across 13 domains including environment, education, health, crime, education, housing, lifestyle etc
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Association of Public Health Observatories was set up to coordinate the nine regional public health observatories and subsequently the themed observatories. Dr Bobbie Jacobson served as Vice Chair from this point until APHO funding was withdrawn in March 2011. Each PHO developed a set of unique lead topic roles. LHO has since led on health inequalities and tobacco.
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Summary of mental health intelligence programme: the programme ran until 2010 in collaboration with the London Care Services Improvement Partnership. Among the many significant pieces of work were the mental health scorecards for London, the briefing on Equal access equal care and updates on suicide in London.
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This was on whether there had been an increase in cycling & walking following the introduction of the congestion charge. To date, the LHO bespoke enquiry service has personally answered nearly 5000 enquiries.
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The new site took 1.5 years of planning to ensure that all the public health observatories' websites worked together. This allowed users to search seamlessly between the sites, retrieving resources regardless of where they were held.
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Indications of public health in the English regions 4: ethnic health This was report number 4 in a series of 10 reviews commissioned by the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, investigating public health topics relating to the choosing health white paper.
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Jubilee line of inequality: when it was first published, the Jubilee line of inequality showed that one year of life was lost by a baby boy for each stop travelling east on the Jubilee tube line between Westminster and Canning Town. This diagram is now widely to illustrate the gradient of health inequalities. The updated Jubilee line of inequality now shows a narrowing of the gap. <a href='' >Jubilee line of inequality</a>
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The London health inequalities forecast was instrumental in supporting local planning and monitoring of the Government’s inequalities targets.
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Save to invest: this key analysis was a collaborative piece of work with London's primary care trusts. It evaluated potential savings across London if all PCTs adopted the same evidential criteria in commissioning common hospital procedures.
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LHO moves home to live with its new host, NHS London, the Strategic Health Authority for London, at Southside, Victoria Street, London.
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The Health inequalities intervention tool was designed to support the national Public Service Agreement target to reduce health inequalities, measured by life expectancy at birth and infant mortality. The first tool quantified gaps in life expectancy and the contributing factors, showing the effect evidence-based interventions had on reducing inequity locally. A suite of tools was developed.
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Born equal: an investigation into infant mortality in London found that forty-one young lives could be saved each year if babies born into the manual socioeconomic group had the same chance of surviving the first year of life as babies born to the rest of the general population. The accompanying technical report is the LHO's most downloaded report with nearly 4000 downloads at March 2013.
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The Health inequalities intervention tool was originally was published in Excel but redeveloped the following year to become an interactive web-based tool, marking the beginning of a shift away from publication of printed health intelligence briefings to online resources.
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London mental health scorecards were the first means of monitoring the delivery of services set out in the white paper Our health, our care, our say: delivering the race equality agenda in London. The mental health profiles have since been produced for all local authority in England by the North East PHO.
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International work has been a feature of the LHO since 2002 when it contributed to the Megapoles study across 15 European capital cities. In 2007, the LHO Deputy Director, was invited to Canada to set up an observatory network. Since then the LHO has supported the development of observatories far and wide to tackle health inequalities in Europe and beyond. This photo is of APHO and Canadian delegates in 2008.
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Sexual health indicators tool was a major collaborative piece of work producing the first data driven sexual health needs assessment for London. This was developed further by the South West PHO to become a national product for England via the Sexual health balanced scorecard.
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LHO moves again! This time to a new organisation working for London's primary care trusts. CSL was intended to bring together the LHO with 7 other pan-London bodies. The LHO moves into Portland House, Victoria, London
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Weighty matters was the first London analysis of the national child measurement programme data. in 2006-08, children aged 4/5 and 10/11 were at the highest risk of obesity among all the English regions.
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Practice profiles have since become a national tool produced by the Eastern Region PHO. However, the LHO produced an initial set of profiles for London, from which the national tool was drawn. These provided a publicly available means of comparing practices and examining performance against a wide range of indicators.
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The LHO's work was shortlisted by the HSJ for its world class commissioning work. We displayed this logo on our home page during 2009.
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An independent peer review of the LHO (by the Improvement & Development Agency) found the organisation to be "a highly motivated and resilient organisation, a good team with strong leadership whose products are of high quality and very well respected."
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10th anniversary: an event was held with Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer, to mark a decade of public health observatories. This photo is of the Directors of the Public Health Observatories.
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The Child and Maternal Health Observatory, (ChiMat), led by Yorkshire & Humber PHO was launched in October 2008 to coordinate child health intelligence nationally. The London ChiMat analyst has provided a specialist role at regional level to provide local stakeholders with help in using and interpreting child health data.
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Commissioning Support for London remains as LHO's host organisation but moves from Portland House to Stephenson House, Hampstead Road, London.
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Local tobacco control profiles for England provided a detailed picture, for the first time, of the burden of smoking-related disease, its costs and evidence of action for local authorities in England.
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Marmot indicators were developed following the publication of the Marmot review, 'Fair society, healthy lives,' in February 2010. They have been subsequently updated annually on the anniversary of the report’s publication. Within the first month, the indicators generated 7000 visits to the LHO site.
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Following the closure of CSL, the successor organisation, London Health Programmes (LHP), takes over as host for LHO. LHP is itself hosted by NHS North Central London via Camden PCT. LHO remains at Stephenson House.
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Capital health gains: this report was compiled to celebrate ten years of health intelligence from the LHO. It assessed London's state of health over the decade 2000-2010.
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@L_H_O currently has 1000 followers from all round the world. Keep following us as we have been chosen as the London regional Twitter account for Public Health England.
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Child's play provided a pictorial view of child and adolescent health in the six Olympic boroughs and was published to mark the London 2012 Games and the promised health legacy for the Olympic boroughs. This was the LHO's first exploration of using statistically accurate images to depict data.
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Prof Martin McKee from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has served on the LHO Board since it was established. He has acted as a firm supporter, peer reviewer and guardian of LHO’s independent authority.
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Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF) was developed in response to the white paper 'Healthy lives, healthy people.' It sets out national requirements for measuring health outcomes. LHO led the production of the first set of PHOF indicators coordinating the PHO network and working with the HPA.
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The LHO moves home to Wellington House, the headquarters of Public Health England - the new agency of the Department of Health. LHO's website has been archived through the British Library
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LHO joins the Knowledge & Intelligence Team for London within the Chief Knowledge Officer's Directorate - part of the new agency called Public Health England led by its Chief Executive, Duncan Selbie.
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The WHO Kobe study on “Urban Health Observatories:
A possible solution to filling a gap in public health intelligence,” described good practice for urban health intelligence. It cites the LHO as “one of the pioneering observatories ….reputable and influential at many levels.” It will be made available on the website shortly.
