Understanding the health and wellbeing needs of children and young people is vital in ensuring services and pathways support longer, healthier lives.
Arden & GEM’s Advanced Analytics Unit created a dataset and population profiles for children and young people in Milton Keynes to help the ICB and local PCNs identify areas of concern and use resources more effectively.
The challenge
Children and young people (CYP) aged 0-19 years make up 24% of the population of England. Their health and wellbeing will determine our future health and prosperity so it is vital that we understand their population composition and health needs.
Bedfordshire Luton and Milton Keynes (BLMK) Integrated Care Board (ICB) approached our Advanced Analytics Unit to design and conduct a comprehensive piece of analysis to provide insight into the makeup and needs of children and young people living in Milton Keynes to support the improvement of the CYP health and wellbeing pathway.
What we did
Arden & GEM’s Advanced Analytics Unit created a comprehensive population profile for CYP in Milton Keynes.
During the design process, our analysts conducted a literature review to identify non-mutually exclusive risk groupings for conditions with similar care pathways and prevention/mitigation needs. The groupings covered major CYP health issues such as learning disabilities, mental health, long term conditions (obesity, asthma, diabetes) as well as social risk factors.
The team then used the existing BLMK segmentation data set (SMITH) as a base, incorporating additional local sources and the risk groupings to produce an analysis data set.
Analytical outputs
CYP population profiles by GP practice
Descriptive population profiles were created incorporating social demographic characteristics and risk factor grouping prevalence to give a baseline population to understand the expected rates for each risk group if no bias existed.
Risk group profiles
Our analysts then profiled the social demographic characteristics of the different risk factor groupings and also examined acute spend and usage within these cohorts.
Health equity analysis
Lastly, the team examined the impact of social deprivation on the prevalence of different risk factors utilising health equity analysis techniques to identify areas of inequity.
Benefits
The analytical outputs have given BLMK ICB and local PCNs a better understanding of the health and wellbeing needs of CYP in Milton Keynes
The analysis has:
- Highlighted the highest areas of concern for each risk group
- Enabled effective allocation of resources to demographics that aren’t well serviced
- Allowed deeper understanding of the prevalence and ubiquity of conditions within the risk groups.