To improve the health, well-being, and independence of people in North East Lincolnshire, requires individuals, communities and service providers to work together. The right support to help people to look after themselves needs to be in place and readily accessible. This means we need to commission the best quality services that meet people's needs effectively and timely, and that make the best use of available resources - services that deliver better outcomes based on local priorities. For this to happen we have to understand people's health and social needs.

The Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) for North East Lincolnshire aims to help in this process. It is an over-arching needs assessment. It consists of JSNA over-arching annual reports, starting in 2008, which review a range of the most up-to-date information, to identify key issues for the general population, for children, and for older people. It includes the suggested JSNA 'core data set' information, national indicators, plus other locally chosen data. It also includes and refers to information from our many previously published needs assessments.

How you use the JSNA information will depend on whether you are interested in improving the overall health and well-being of North East Lincolnshire, in particular neighbourhoods or community groups, or in a particular health or social issue. It will depend on whether you need summary information from the annual reports, or the detailed information from core data set summaries and spreadsheets, needs assessments and their associated updates.

From this year the data is being made available on North East Lincolnshire's Data Observatory website (North East Lincolnshire Informed).

www.nelincsdata.net