Circulatory diseases - The Herefordshire Partnership

Circulatory diseases

Mortality rates from circulatory diseases include deaths from diseases such as coronary heart disease and strokes¹. In Herefordshire, these mortality rates have been steadily decreasing over the reporting period.

Herefordshire has generally been in a favourable position when compared to both the West Midlands region and England as a whole, with significantly lower mortality rates². This gap narrowed during 2003-05 when Herefordshire's mortality rates from circulatory diseases did not decrease at the same rate as the West Midlands or England. However this trend was not repeated in 2004-06, with Herefordshire showing a greater decrease in mortality rates than England and the West Midlands region.

Since 1995-97, Herefordshire has seen a 37% decrease in the mortality rate from circulatory diseases. West Midlands has seen a 42% decrease and England 40%.

Comparator areas are those areas (PCTs in 2002-04 and local authorities in 2004-06) which have similar characteristics in terms of demographic, household composition, housing, socio-economic, employment and industry sector³. An average for these areas is given to allow comparisons of similar areas to Herefordshire.

When comparing with the comparator areas each year, mortality rates in Herefordshire appear to be at similar levels in both 2003-05 and 04-06.

Chart 1. Mortality rate from circulatory diseases for people aged under 75 (per 100,000 population aged under 75)

Source: ONS, Crown Copyright

¹ All diseases specified by the codes ICD10 I00-I99

² Significantly - means statistically significant as shown by the confidence intervals. For more information about this please see the Reference Section 53.

³ In 2003-05 the PCTs that were the most similar to Herefordshire in this were are Shropshire County, Mid-Devon and Mendip. In 2004-06, the authorities that were the most similar were Mid-Devon, North Shropshire, Mendip and Kings Lynn & West Norfolk.