Beyond the Annual Report

Abstract

Reflects on three years′ experience of Annual Reports on the Public Health. Argues that the material benefits do not warrant an overly substantial amount of dedicated time – a five‐year strategic public health programme, supported by a periodic cross‐sectional analysis, is more appropriate and would exploit much wider sources of data than those generally appearing in Annual Reports, Considers the value of the Decennial Census of Population, as a data source. Suggests that it must be used in conjunction with other sources of “hard” data. Also argues that methods for collecting and incorporating qualitative data must be developed, together with a framework for informed policy analysis, which would facilitate a participative dialogue compatible with the aims of the “new” public health.

The Potential of Cognitive Mapping in Planning Health Provision

“…A cognitive map representing all aspects of health covered by the "Health for All in 2000" project could be used to facilitate discussion among the various agencies involved in policy making, in particular, to show where targets are not being met and to identify possible causes. As Thunhurst argues [5], a supportive framework of data collection and information analysis is required if the targets set for "Health for All in 2000" are to be realized and cognitive mapping could play an important part in the framework.…”

“…A significant amount of work has already been carried out in determining and measuring a common set of indicators of health which can be used within the UK Healthy Cities Network [4], and these indicators should form the basis of the quantitative models for estimating the targets. However, in order to build reliable and realistic models, accurate information and data collation is needed and it was accepted early in the study that building models based on statistical data to represent the relationships between health indicators could prove very difficult [5].…”