This tool is designed to support Primary Care Trusts with their Local Delivery Planning and commissioning. It builds on the previous Health Inequalities Intervention tool which provided information for Spearhead areas only, and now includes all local authorities, spearhead and non-spearhead, and provides information on within as well as between area inequalities.

This tool provides information on the following:

• The current life expectancy in each local authority, and in the most deprived quintile of each local authority
• The current gap in life expectancy between the most deprived quintile and the local authority as a whole for all areas, and between the local authority and England for spearhead areas
• An analysis of the contribution of causes of death to the gap between the most deprived quintile of the local authority and a variety of comparators.

It allows local authorities to estimate the effect on their life expectancy if certain interventions are increased, specifically:

• Interventions to reduce infant mortality (in local authorities with a large number of infant deaths)
• Smoking cessation
• Antihypertensive prescribing in people with previously undiagnosed\uncontrolled hypertension, but do not have existing coronary heart disease or history of stroke
• Statin prescribing in those people that are newly identified and have been treated with antihypertensive medication, but do not have existing coronary heart disease or history of stroke

The tool allows the user to investigate two scenarios – an intervention applied across the local authority and the same size of intervention applied only in the most deprived quintile. The tool thus supports action to reduce health inequalities within every local authority.

The tool was developed by the Association of Public Health Observatories for the Department of Health.

This version of the tool was released in June 2008 and supersedes the previous prototype tool that was restricted to Spearhead authorities.

Click below to launch the Health Inequalities Intervention Tool

To view the technical documentation and some frequently asked questions see the documents below.