The Review of the Dissemination of Health Statistics Carole Abrahams Office for National Statistics

The health review Increased interest in health statistics Changing legal environment Need for standard guidance Two sets of guidance: –Abortion statistics –All other published health statistics Accepted as GSS standard

Framework for confidentiality protection Determine users’ requirements Understand the data Are there circumstances where disclosure is likely to occur? If so, would disclosure represent a breach of public trust, law or policy? If required select appropriate disclosure control methods Implement and disseminate

Disclosure control methods Maximise utility while reducing risk to an acceptable level Methods for applying disclosure control -Table redesign -Rounding -Suppression -Perturbation -Record swapping Alternative methods for presenting data

Implementation of the Health Review and the Guidance Project led by ONS Stakeholders Dissemination plan –Recording –Templates –Training Evaluation and report

Conceptions data – an example Government target to reduce under-18 conception rate by 50% by 2010 Requirement for information by small area Three SDC methods used: –Data for 3 years combined –E&W data divided into quintiles –Suppression for small populations Maps produced on NeSS at the ward level

Under 18 conceptions for wards in London Jan 2001 – Dec 2003 Kensington & Chelsea