1  Introduction (from README)

This project is a collection of information and knowledge related to analytical work on “Health Inequalities”, as performed in the NHS and the wider UK Health and Social Care sector.

1.1 Aim

The aim of the project is to collect together information that is helpful and relevant to analysts doing work in this space. By doing this, the project will:

1. Become a “Body of Knowledge”, and a quick reference for analysts.

2. Share ideas and approaches which analysts can use in their own work, lowering the barrier to entry into this work, and encouraging broader and deeper analytical participation for the benefit of patients.

3. Share public examples of previous work, to support conversations with stakeholders during the specification stage of a health inequalities project.

4. Foster open-source collaboration in an area of public benefit, in line with recommendations from the Goldacre Review, and the NHS Digital Sevice Manual.

1.2 Who is the audience?

The scope is very large, and analysts working in this space come from different types of organisations. For example:

• Provider trusts. Analysts with good access to patient-level data who can use their analyses to provide practical decision-support to people directly running services that patients use.

• Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). Analysts with less access to patient-level data, but with access to information from multiple organisations in a region, and with more context about regional populations, links to public health organisations, and local government.

• NHS “centre”. Analysts from NHS Regions or NHS England who work with government on broad health inequalities intervention planning (for example those working on the Core20PLUS5 programme).

• Public Health analysts. Analysts who may be working in Local Authorities or in Government Civil Service bodies who work with Public Health data.

The project is organic, and will be taken in the direction that contributors. Some of the information may be relevant to only certain areas but one of the issues we face, as analysts, new and old is that this information is hidden. It may be that one area does something different but sharing this can influence how others collect and analyse their data.

This is a call to action for contributors to involve themselves in the project! Please get involved if you work in this space, can see a gap, or want to steer the direction of this project.

1.3 Contributing

Please see our guidance on how to contribute.

This project is released with a Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.

The simplest way to contribute is to raise an issue detailing the feature or functionality you would like to see added, or any unexpected behaviour or bugs you have experienced.

1.4 Comments and notations

This book can receive comments via giscus which is available at the bottom of each page and will require a GitHub account to comment on.

Each page can also receive notations through hypothes.is and this can be found at the top right of every page. It is an overlay so can be seen even when you scroll down the page. To comment you will need to sign in to a hypothes.is account.

Details on how these have been used in the Quarto book can be found through the Quarto documentation.

1.5 Related projects

This project has complementary R package projects within NHS-R Community, which are also open to contribution:

{NHSRpopulation} - An R package to access the Index of Multiple Deprivation API.

{NHSRpostcodetools} - This is a package of useful functions related to working with Postcodes.

1.6 Contributors ✨

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

heather-humphreys 🖋	Alastair Watson 👀	Tom Smith 🖋 👀	Chris Beeley 🐛	Zoë Turner 👀 💻 🖋	Claire Welsh 🖋	wyuill 🖋
Iain Dillingham 🖋	John MacKintosh 🖋

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!