On 17 March 2026, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England published the Neighbourhood Health Framework, setting out how the NHS and local authorities will reorganise health and care services around defined local populations. The framework represents the most significant structural commitment to place-based health delivery in England in over a decade, with plans for 250 Neighbourhood Health Centres by 2035, new Integrated Neighbourhood Teams, and a fundamental shift of resources from hospitals into communities.
At the Geographic Data Service, our mission is to employ geographic methodologies to integrate diverse data sources with nationally representative administrative and statistical data, identifying economic and social inequalities and informing policies aimed at alleviating disparities. The Neighbourhood Health Framework speaks directly to this mission, and one of our flagship open data products, the Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards (AHAH) index, is well positioned to support its delivery.
What the framework asks of local systems
The framework places substantial new demands on Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), Health and Wellbeing Boards (HWBs), and local authorities. They must define neighbourhood geographies, develop neighbourhood health plans informed by Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNAs), set local outcome measures that address health inequalities, and identify where to site new Neighbourhood Health Centres and deploy Integrated Neighbourhood Teams. All of this requires granular, multi-dimensional evidence about the health-relevant characteristics of local environments which is exactly the kind of intelligence that AHAH provides.
What AHAH measures
AHAH is a multi-dimensional open data index covering all 43,064 Lower Layer Super Output Areas and Data Zones across Great Britain. It measures how “healthy” neighbourhoods are based on accessibility to health-promoting and health-damaging features of the built environment, organised across four domains:
Retail environment: access to fast food outlets, pubs and bars, tobacconists, and gambling outlets. These are the commercial determinants of health that shape diet, alcohol consumption, and addictive behaviours at the neighbourhood level.
Health services: drive-time access to GP surgeries, hospitals, pharmacies, dentists, and leisure centres. This domain directly captures the spatial accessibility of the services that the Neighbourhood Health Framework seeks to reorganise.
Physical environment: proximity to blue space, active greenspace, and passive greenspace measured via satellite-derived NDVI. These features underpin the prevention agenda that runs throughout the framework.
Air quality: modelled concentrations of NO₂, PM₁₀, and SO₂, capturing environmental hazards with well-established links to respiratory and cardiovascular disease.
The current release (Version 5, February 2026) uses 2021 census boundaries for England and Wales and 2022 Data Zones for Scotland. The full dataset, including all input components, ranks, and percentiles is available under the UK Open Government Licence here.
Where AHAH meets the framework
Informing Joint Strategic Needs Assessments
The framework repeatedly emphasises that neighbourhood health plans must be “informed by the JSNA” and address locally identified health inequalities. AHAH provides a standardised, comparable evidence layer that local authorities and ICBs can integrate directly into needs assessments. Rather than assembling ad hoc environmental indicators from multiple sources, analysts can draw on a single, methodologically consistent dataset that covers all four domains of neighbourhood healthiness.
Defining neighbourhood geographies
One of the framework’s earliest requirements is for HWBs to “set the geography around which services should be delivered.” This is not a trivial task as neighbourhood boundaries need to reflect genuine patterns of need, not just administrative convenience. AHAH’s small-area granularity allows planners to profile candidate geographies across multiple dimensions simultaneously, identifying clusters where poor health service access, unhealthy retail environments, limited greenspace, and poor air quality compound one another. This kind of multi-domain spatial analysis is central to the GeoDS approach of using geography as the medium to link, verify, and analyse diverse data sources.
Siting Neighbourhood Health Centres
The framework commits to 250 Neighbourhood Health Centres by 2035, with wave 1 in 2026–27 targeting “areas of highest deprivation.” AHAH’s health services domain measuring access to GPs, hospitals, pharmacies, dentists, and leisure centres can directly identify where gaps in provision are greatest. Overlaying this with the retail environment domain highlights neighbourhoods where residents face a double disadvantage: limited access to health services combined with high exposure to unhealthy commercial environments.
Supporting Integrated Neighbourhood Teams
The framework calls for Integrated Neighbourhood Teams to use “data to effectively manage risk and prevent escalation” and for providers to adopt “a strong analytical approach to informing proactive care management.” Clinical data tells teams who is at risk; AHAH tells them where and why. Understanding that a neighbourhood has poor greenspace access, high fast food density, and long travel times to the nearest GP helps explain patterns of CVD, diabetes, and COPD; which are the very conditions the framework identifies as priorities for its high-priority cohorts. This environmental context layer complements clinical risk stratification and supports the more holistic, place-based approach to population health management that the framework envisions.
Evidencing the prevention agenda
The framework’s central ambition is a “left shift” from hospital to community and from treatment to prevention. Making the case for preventive investment requires evidence about the environmental conditions that either support or undermine healthy behaviours. AHAH’s greenspace and leisure centre indicators speak directly to physical activity; its air quality domain captures respiratory and cardiovascular hazards; and its retail environment indicators quantify exposure to fast food, alcohol, tobacco, and gambling. Together, such data provide a structured evidence base for the prevention components of neighbourhood health plans, linking the wider determinants of health to specific, measurable, place-based indicators.
Reducing health inequalities
Health inequality reduction is threaded throughout the framework. ICBs and local authorities must demonstrate how neighbourhood health will “address local priorities and health inequalities.” AHAH’s composite index provides a single summary measure of environmental health disadvantage, while its domain and component scores allow systems to decompose inequality into its constituent parts. This supports both the identification of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods and the design of targeted interventions that address specific local drivers.
Contributing to the Local Outcomes Framework
The framework recommends that HWBs consider the Local Outcomes Framework metrics and outcomes. AHAH serves as a contextual and explanatory layer alongside those outcome measures, helping local systems understand the environmental drivers behind spatial variation in health outcomes. Where outcome data shows that a neighbourhood has elevated rates of cardiovascular disease, AHAH can help determine whether poor air quality, limited access to greenspace, proximity to fast food outlets, or distance from health services.
Looking ahead
The Neighbourhood Health Framework sets ambitious timescales. Stage 1 asks ICBs to agree neighbourhood footprints, establish plans for Integrated Neighbourhood Teams, and confirm data-sharing arrangements during 2026–27. Stage 2 requires locally owned neighbourhood health plans to be developed with HWB partners for implementation from 2027–28.
AHAH Version 5, released in February 2026 on current census geographies, is available now and is ready for this planning cycle. As local systems begin the work of defining their neighbourhoods, profiling their populations, and building the evidence base for their health plans, we hope AHAH will prove a useful and accessible resource.
At the Geographic Data Service, we are committed to bringing focus to populations at risk, measuring and evidencing inequalities of outcome, and supporting policies that foster greater equality of opportunity. The Neighbourhood Health Framework represents an important step towards place-based health delivery in England, and we look forward to supporting local systems as they work to make it a reality.
The Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards (AHAH) index is produced by the Geographic Data Service. AHAH Version 5 data, documentation, and source code are available at data.geods.ac.uk.
