joint strategic needs assessment foundation profile - JSNA

Interative Hull Atlas: www.hullpublichealth.org/Pages/hull_atlas.htm More information: www.jsnaonline.org and www.hullpublichealth.org
7.7 Life Expectancy at Birth
Life expectancy at birth is a commonly used method of assessing health, improvements
in health over time, and differences in health between different groups (defined on the
basis of time, geography, deprivation, social class, smoking status, etc). A common
misconception is that life expectancy at birth measures the expected duration of life for a
newborn; it does not. It is a measure of life expectancy assuming that the current agespecific
mortality rates continue throughout an entire lifetime. This is an unrealistic
assumption and therefore life expectancy figures are an indication of current health
status of a population rather than an expectation of the duration of life (see section
12.10 on page 780 for more information on life expectancy).
7.7.1 Life Expectancy at Birth in Hull Compared to England and Comparator
Areas
Figure 46 and Figure 47 illustrate life expectancy at birth (obtained from the
Compendium) for males and females respectively for Hull, England and the Yorkshire
and The Humber SHA. The underlying data for this figure is given in the APPENDIX on
page 838 and Table 72 gives the figures for the most recent period 2006-2008.
Table 72 gives the life expectancy at birth 2006-2008 for Hull and some comparator
areas (see section 3.3.3 on page 44 for more information on the problems of
comparator areas for Hull).
The rank is given out of the 324 local authorities (based on boundaries April 2009)
where life expectancy is calculated (there are two local authorities where life expectancy
is not calculated due to the low population size: City of London and Isles of Scilly).
Hull‟s life expectancy figures are in the bottom 3% of local authorities for 2006-2008
(ranks 316 and 314 for males and females respectively) which is similar to its ranking for
deprivation (ranked 344 th out of 354 local authorities – based on April 2006 boundaries
for local authorities; see section 6.9.1 on page 131). The average life expectancy
figure is given for the 10 comparator areas combined, and this will be an estimate of the
true life expectancy which will not be exactly the same as the life expectancy figure if it
were properly calculated from population and mortality information (if the data were
available). However, it is unlikely to differ substantially to the true calculated value.
Similarly, the average rank is given for the 10 comparator areas and this is not weighted
in any way for population size.
Joint Strategic Needs Assessment Foundation Profile – Hull Health Profile: Release 3. March 2011. 181