North Tyneside Overview of health and wellbeing

Healthy life expectancy

Healthy life expectancy (HLE) can be defined as ‘a measure of the average number of years a person would expect to live in good health based on mortality rates and prevalence of self-reported good health’. There are two components which determine the measure of HLE :

  • the prevalence of self-reported good health in the population
  • mortality rates

For men the HLE is 61.6 years, this is the best in the NE region (followed closely by Northumberland) and statistically similar to that for England. This is a decrease from at 62.2 years in 2015-2017. England has remained has remained stable.


Line graph titled 'Healthy life expectancy at birth (Male, 3 year range),' showing data for England, North East region, and North Tyneside from 2010-12 to 2018-20. The y-axis represents healthy life expectancy in years, ranging from 58 to 63. North Tyneside's healthy life expectancy (light blue line) fluctuates, generally lower than the North East region (dark blue line) and England (orange line)

For women it is 57.2 years, which is lower than the value for the North East (59.7 years) and for England (63.9 years). The value for North Tyneside is the second worst in the region after Sunderland. This is a decrease from 63.3 years 2016-2018. England has remained stable.


Line graph titled 'Healthy life expectancy at birth (Female, 3 year range),' showing data for England, North East region, and North Tyneside from 2010-12 to 2018-20. The y-axis represents healthy life expectancy in years, ranging from 50 to 64. North Tyneside's healthy life expectancy fluctuates, generally lower than the North East region and England.

Healthy life expectancy at birth in North Tyneside over the last decade has fallen for both males and females however the decrease for females is more significant while healthy life expectancy for England has held steady.

Inequalities

Healthy life expectancy over time, has not increased at the same rate as life expectancy so more years are spent in poor health. Not only do people living in more deprived areas have shorter life spans, they also live more years in poor health.

What may this mean?

Changes in self-reported good health prevalence have a larger impact on HLE than changes in mortality rates.

Chronic health conditions and multimorbidity are the clearest drivers of selfreported poor health. Those with chronic Musculo-skeletal (MSK) conditions have over three times the odds of reporting poor health than those without. Access to treatment during the pandemic and subsequently for these conditions may further impact self-reported poor health.

Risk factors such as physical activity, smoking status, education, and household income are also associated with self-reported poor health in England and likely to have important and complex relationships with each other and physical health status.