NHS Health Atlas – risk and disease

risk

Risk of Melanoma – from BBC and Imperial College London

NHS Choices have published a health atlas that maps the risk of a number of illnesses across England and Wales. The research behind the map, which compiles data from over 25 years, was carried out by Imperial College London.

The Data was collected between 1985 and 2009 from the ONS and from cancer registers. The 11 diseases and conditions that have been mapped are:

  • Lung cancer
  • Breast cancer
  • Prostate cancer
  • Malignant melanoma
  • Bladder cancer
  • Mesothelioma
  • Liver cancer
  • Coronary heart disease
  • COPD mortality
  • Kidney disease
  • Stillbirth
  • Low birth weight

A cursory glance at the map will reveal expected trends such as the risk of skin cancer being higher in the South-East where there is more sunshine and higher risks of lung cancer coinciding with larger cities where airborne pollutants are more likely. However, i am sure that there are other interesting observations that could be extracted if you have time to explore the data.

You can explore some of the data on the NHS Choices website and read about it on the Independent and the BBC website.

I will try to find the data and post it in ShareGeo, but until then you might want to explore this dataset that shows death related to air pollution.  I really need to get some happier datasets into ShareGeo!

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