The acronyms, in plain English.

The average number of years a baby born today would live if mortality rates at every age stayed at the levels observed during the reporting period. Period life expectancy — not a prediction of how long this baby will actually live, but a snapshot of current mortality. Published by ONS for every UK upper-tier authority annually.

The average number of years lived in self-reported good or very good health, on the same period basis as LE. The gap between LE and HLE is the years a person is expected to spend in poorer health. Lifemap’s editorial focus.

LE − HLE. How long the average resident of an area is expected to live in poorer health. Bigger gaps tend to track deprivation.

The county or unitary authority that delivers strategic services like adult social care and public health. England has 151 of these (counties, metropolitan boroughs, London boroughs, unitary authorities). Most public-health statistics are published at this level. ONS area-code prefixes: E06, E08, E09, E10; Scotland S12; Wales W06; Northern Ireland N09.

The district council that handles housing, planning, refuse collection. England has 164 of these, sitting inside one of 21 counties. ONS prefix: E07. Some lifestyle indicators publish at LTLA, some don’t — Lifemap fetches both LTLA and UTLA from Fingertips.

The 9-character “Government Statistical Service” code identifying every UK administrative area. E07000106 is Canterbury; S12000049 is Glasgow City. Stable across publications — the canonical join key.

Health and Social Care Trust — Northern Ireland’s 5 NHS regions. Health Survey NI publishes adult lifestyle prevalence at this level only, never at LGD2014 council level.

England’s 42 NHS commissioning bodies. Different geography from local authorities — Lifemap does not currently use ICB data; ICB rows that appeared in some upstream sources have been dropped from the per-area dataset.

England’s small-area deprivation score. Published by DLUHC every few years, ranks every neighbourhood (LSOA) on income, employment, education, health, crime, housing, and living environment. Lifemap’s deprivation lens uses IMD deciles — the country split into ten equal-sized groups by deprivation score, where decile 1 is most deprived.

Wales’s equivalent of IMD. Lifemap uses WIMD quintiles — five groups rather than ten, because Wales has fewer LSOAs.

Scotland’s equivalent. Currently not used by Lifemap — pending integration in a future release.

Northern Ireland’s equivalent. Currently not used by Lifemap — pending integration.

Body Mass Index of 25 or above — the threshold OHID Fingertips uses for its English “obesity” column (indicator 93088). Includes everyone classified as overweight or obese. Numerically larger than the BMI ≥ 30 threshold used elsewhere.

The Scottish Health Survey and Welsh Health Survey use this stricter threshold. A figure published as “obesity” in Scotland or Wales is not directly comparable to the same column in England without adjusting for the BMI ≥ 25 vs ≥ 30 difference.

UK Chief Medical Officers’ physical activity guideline: 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week (or 75 minutes vigorous). All three of Lifemap’s English (Fingertips), Scottish (SHeS) and Welsh (NSW) sources now report against this threshold. Cross-country comparability is end-to-end.

UK CMO drinking guideline. Anyone exceeding it is “above-guideline”. All three of Fingertips indicator 92778, SHeS “Hazardous/Harmful drinker” and the National Survey for Wales “above 14 units per week” use this threshold — cross-country comparability end-to-end as of April 2026.

Adults consuming five or more portions of fruit and vegetables per day, self-reported.

Self-reported current cigarette smoking, 18+ years. Fingertips indicator 91547. Scotland’s SSCQ 2023 uses a slightly narrower “currently smokes cigarettes” definition; the difference is small.

The UK’s national statistical office. Source for life expectancy, healthy life expectancy, and the deprivation lens.

The UK government’s public-health analytics arm, part of DHSC. Publishes the Fingertips API used for English lifestyle indicators.

OHID’s public-health data platform: fingertips.phe.org.uk. Lifemap pulls data from its /api/all_data/csv/for_one_indicator endpoint.

Annual Scottish Government survey of adult health behaviours. Council-area results are published via a Shiny dashboard; we scrape the dashboard for non-API access.

Pooled output of three Scottish Government surveys (Scottish Health Survey, Scottish Household Survey, Scottish Crime and Justice Survey). Provides council-area smoking prevalence with a sample of ~19,700.

The Welsh Government’s annual social survey, replacing the Welsh Health Survey in 2016. Lifemap uses NSW 2019-20 (the last LA-level pool, dataset hlth5002) for all five Welsh lifestyle indicators — the COVID-era survey-mode change pulled subsequent waves off LA-level. Definitions match UK CMO thresholds.

Predecessor to NSW; ran annually until 2015. Last LA-level edition: 2014–15. No longer used by Lifemap as of April 2026 (superseded by NSW 2019-20).

Northern Ireland’s Health and Social Care system; HSCIMS is the public-health data portal. Adult lifestyle prevalence is published at HSC Trust level only (5 trusts), not at LGD council level (11 districts).

The UK government’s default open-data licence: free to copy, publish, distribute, transmit and adapt, provided the source is acknowledged. Every source Lifemap uses is OGL v3.0 except where noted.