Background

The South West Public Health Observatory and Network of Public Health Observatories have become part of Public Health England, an executive agency of the Department of Health.

Public Health England has been established to protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing and to reduce inequalities. It will lead on the development of a 21st- century health and wellbeing service, supporting local authorities and the NHS to deliver the greatest possible improvements in public health. It came into being in April 2013. For all corporate information please see www.gov.uk/phe

The Sexual Health Balanced Scorecard is now managed by Public Health England's Knowledge and Intelligence Team (South West) - formerly the public health intelligence team at the South West Public Health Observatory.

This is archive material:

Introduction

A review of the National Strategy for Sexual Health and HIV, Progress and priorities — working together for high quality sexual health commissioned by the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV, recommended that a high-level set of sexual health process and outcome indicators should be developed to measure progress at local and national levels.

The importance of access to contraception and sexual health services for young people has also been emphasised by the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group, and the Department of Health has provided additional funding to Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities to improve young people's uptake of contraception.

Development of the Sexual Health Balanced Scorecard

The South West Public Health Observatory was originally commissioned by the Department of Health to develop the recommended high level indicator set, with a particular focus on young people to enable monitoring of the impact of the additional monies to improve contraception uptake. It was decided that the focus should be Primary Care Trust (PCT) level with a tool enabling comparisons at Strategic Health Authority (SHA) and national level.

The Sexual Health Balanced Scorecard website was first released in March 2010. We have worked closely with colleagues at the Department of Health, the Health Protection Agency, East Midlands Public Health Observatory and the Teenage Pregnancy Unit to develop the indicator set. Given the current NHS and public health reorganisation, we are now focussing on developing local authority level indicators, but will continue to update PCT level indicators where this is not yet possible. We will continue to explore with colleagues ways of improving use of current and new data as it becomes available, and welcome feedback to inform this process.

The indicators will be updated and developed further on an ongoing basis. A wide range of useful links have also been included to provide added value and we welcome suggestions for further key resources and events to include. Users can register for email alerts to receive notification of latest updates to the website.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the many people in our own and partner organisations mentioned above for their time and effort on this project. We are also grateful to colleagues in the Information Centre for Health and Social Care, the Office for National Statistics, the Home Office, the Sex Education Forum and the South West Strategic Health Authority for their supply of data, analysis and advice.

For the indicator 'metadata' descriptions, rather than reinvent the wheel, we have also used the 'rationale' text from the 'Measuring Further Progress' section in the Progress and priorities report and liberally drawn on text from the Health Protection Agency's Sexual Health Profiles; the network of Public Health Observatories' Health Profiles Indicator Guide; the London sexual health indicators — a data-driven needs assessment report; the report Indications of Public Health in the English Regions 6: Sexual Health; and national statistical bulletins (as referenced within the descriptions).