Welcome

This website has been commissioned by the Department of Health as part of the implementation of the Choosing Health White Paper.

Choosing Health and its sequel publication, Delivering choosing health - making healthier choices easier,  emphasise the need for public health support in the form of greatly enhanced  information and intelligence to improve local analysis and decision making. The LINK Toolkit is a system that supports this by providing locally specific profiles about households,  neighbourhoods and larger areas based on locally available data, which are free and up to date at the point and time of use.

The toolkit describes a methodology that  may be used in a variety of ways at local level to profile needs, not only in health but also in related areas such as crime, education, and social services. The unique feature of the toolkit is that it is based around household level administrative data.

The aim is to guide the user through the typical stages involved in using local household level data to provide profiles of local populations. It is intended to enable an information analyst within a PCT or local authority to understand what is required and to successfully apply the techniques themselves.

The toolkit consists of 5 modules. The user can work through the constituent steps and all 5 modules chronologically, or simply select the modules relevant to them. Each step can be selected to retrieve more information and detail on that aspect of the procedure. Action points and links to resources such as relevant documents and completed studies are also provided.

A tutorial takes the user through the procedure in a practical exercise.

PROCEED