Lifestyle
The trigger indicators included cover a wide range of factors widely recognised as impacting on people’s health and well being. This index included both positive and negative factors. Positive factors included exercising more than five times a week for 30 minutes, eating 5 or more portions fruit or vegetables and also eating pasta, cereals and wholemeal bread most days. Negative factors included eating processed meats, fried food and takeaways on most days, amount of people who smoke occasionally or on a daily basis, drink to excess and the proportion factor of those residents who
undertake no exercise at all.
All of the factors were weighted according to the seriousness of the activity and advice from our health partners was important in giving the factors a realistic risk factor. This means those factors which potential cause worse health problems, and have a higher cost to society score higher than those with a lower risk and lower cost.
The index runs from –4 indicating a very high proportion of residents following unhealthy lifestyles to +5. This would indicate a very high proportion of residents following a healthy lifestyle. The score of –0.52 indicates that the average residents in the NM area generally have an unhealthy lifestyle.
