The COVID-19 vulnerability index is composed of clinical vulnerability and social vulnerability. Clinical vulnerability will help identify who is likely to transition from 'social distancing' to 'self-isolating/quarantining' and back, allowing us to account for the potential differing needs of those two groups. Social vulnerability will identify whether someone has unmet needs by modelling their existing social support and isolation.
This will map vulnerability at the geographical levels of Local Authorities (for coordinating with local government, statutory bodies etc.) and wards (which are well-defined and meaningful communities, allowing for more nuanced targeting).
Clinical vulnerability includes:
- Prevalence of underlying conditions:
- Estimated prevalence of CHD
- Estimated prevalence of Heart failure
- Estimated prevalence of COPD
- Estimated prevalence of peripheral arterial disease
Social vulnerability includes:
- Community Needs: connectedness; engagement; assets
- A bespoke Index of Multiple Deprivation: income, employment, barriers to housing and services, environmental
If you don't want to grapple with the code, we've already produced several outputs:
- the overall COVID-19 Vulnerability Index in .csv and .geojson formats (metadata)
- the clinical vulnerability part of the index
- our bespoke COVID-19 Index of Multiple Deprivation for wards and lower-layer super output areas
Barriers to housing and services includes the following underlying indicators:
- Road distance to a post office indicator (km)
- Road distance to a primary school indicator (km)
- Road distance to general store or supermarket indicator (km)
- Road distance to a GP surgery indicator (km)
- Household overcrowding indicator
- Homelessness indicator (rate per 1000 households)
- Owner-occupation affordability (component of housing affordability indicator)
- Private rental affordability (component of housing affordability indicator)
- Housing affordability indicator
Living environment includes:
- Housing in poor condition indicator
- Houses without central heating indicator
- Road traffic accidents indicator
- Nitrogen dioxide (component of air quality indicator)
- Benzene (component of air quality indicator)
- Sulphur dioxide (component of air quality indicator)
- Particulates (component of air quality indicator)
- Air quality indicator
From the Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion: "The Community Needs Index aims to bring together data on the social and cultural factors that can lead to poorer outcomes in communities. For example, challenges around a lack of places to meet, poor facilities, poor connectivity and low participation. The index attempts to bring all the various sources of information on these themes together into a single index, so that we can identify which areas have the greatest challenges on those factors.
It is a very different index from the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) as it’s more about the social needs and the social gaps that contribute towards challenges in a community – rather than the economic needs and challenges."