The Health of our area

Hackney Central, like all the different wards in Hackney are in the top 10% of the most deprived areas in the country.

The East London and City NHS have produced new reports that look at the breakdown of important health statistics for Hackney and the findings make for some challenging reading and shows how much more work there is to do in our own community to improve people's life chances and basic health.

Headlines:

• We have just under 11,000 people living in our ward


• Almost 1 in 5 of our residents are under 15 and 70% are of working age


• 7% of our neighbours provide regular unpaid caring for friends or relatives - just under 200 people are spending 50 hours or more a week caring for people


• Almost 6 out of 10 of us live in council or housing association properties


• 17% of our working age residents are on job seekers allowance or incapacity benefit


• We have the second lowest level of life expectancy for women in the borough (just under 79 years) and the lowest life expectancy for men (just under 73 years old)


• We have lower levels of childhood obesity than the borough average, but still a staggering 1 in 5 children are obese


• Teenage pregnancy remains a substantial issue, with just under 9% of young women between 15 % 17 becoming pregnant


• 35 of our neighbours with disabilities receive support from the council to live independently at home


• Cardiovascular health (heart disease) is a problem with our death rate at about 80% higher than the English average and cancer deaths 36% higher than the English average (the highest in the borough)

The readings make for some worrying reading and shows the sort of challenges that still face the council - now that it has taken over responsibility for public health - and for our local NHS.

With all the excitement about the Olympics, it is often all too easy to forget about the underlying problems that many of our community face and good health is clearly one of them. Whilst smoking rates and teenage pregnancy rates have fallen - the money to deliver these services has been cut by the government - forgetting that even in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, some of our own are in desperate need of help and support.

More details about the Hackney Central statistics can be found here.

Other profiles and summary reports of major categories of health issues can also be found here.