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Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards (AHAH) Index

5 November, 2024 by

The Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards (AHAH) index is designed to allow policy and decision makers to understand which areas have poor environments for health, and to help move away from treating features of the environment in isolation.

The Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards index is comprised of four domains: access to retail services (fast food outlets, gambling outlets, pubs/bars/nightclubs, off licences, tobacconists), access to health services (GP surgeries, A&E hospitals, pharmacies, dentists and leisure centres), the physical environment (access to green spaces and blue spaces) and levels of air pollution (nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter smaller than 10 microns (PM10) and sulphur dioxide (SO2)). The Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards index provides a summary of an area’s relative performance on these indicators (the second and third domains conceptualised as health promoting and the first (access to retail) as health demoting. It therefore provides information on how conducive to good health an area is relative to other areas, for the specific indicators.

Public Health England’s (now the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities) Spatial Planning for Health document states that an ‘ever-increasing body of research indicates that the environment in which we live is inextricably linked to our health across the life course. For example, the design of our neighbourhoods can influence physical activity levels, travel patterns, social connectivity, mental and physical health and wellbeing outcomes.’ The indicator is intended to support interventions to improve the health promoting qualities of the environment, and is primarily aimed at those working in public health roles in local authorities.

The Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards index is constructed given equal weight to the different measures and domains. It is therefore designed as a balanced description of an area with regard to these domains, and not as a summary of the health impacts on the population.

The Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards index is originally produced at lower layer super output area geographical level as an average of values for constituent postcodes but has been presented at local authority level in the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities’ Fingertips.

Further information is presented under Geographical Area.

Also see Lower Layer Super Output Areas and Percentiles.

Also see Geographical Area.

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