Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards (AHAH)

Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards (AHAH)#

Last modified: 18 Jul 2025

The Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards dataset is a multi-dimensional index which describes accessibility to certain environmental features relating to health and wellbeing.

More information about this dataset is available here.

AHAH (the index of ‘Access to Health Assets and Hazards’) is a multi-dimensional index developed by the Geographic Data Service for Great Britain measuring how ‘healthy’ neighbourhoods are. The AHAH index combines indicators under four different domains of accessibility: Retail environment (access to fast food outlets, pubs, tobacconists, gambling outlets), Health services (access to GPs, hospitals, pharmacies, dentists, leisure services), Physical environment (Blue Space, Green Space - Passive), and Air quality (NO₂, PM10, SO₂). Measurement data and deciles for the overall index, 4 domains and 14 inputs are produced for Lower Level Super Output Areas (LSOAs) for England and Wales, and Data Zones (DZ) for Scotland. Distances shown for some of the measurement data are means of the time (in minutes) for driving by car along the established road network, between the population weighted centroid of each postcode contained within each statistical geographical unit, and the actual location of the outlet/service.

1. Summary#

Lower Layer Super Output Area level (LSOA), England and Wales

AHAH (the index of ‘Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards’) is a multi-dimensional index combining indicators under four different domains of accessibility: Retail environment (access to fast food outlets, pubs, tobacconists, gambling outlets), Health services (access to GPs, hospitals (NHS trust sites), pharmacies, dentists, leisure services), Physical environment (Blue Space, Green Space - Passive), and Air quality (NO₂, PM10, SO₂), this dataset covers England and Wales.

Dataset Descriptor	Dataset-specific Information
Name of dataset in TRE	AHAH_geo_indicators_england_wales
Citation (APA)	Daras, K., Green, M.A., Davies, A. et al. Open data on health-related neighbourhood features in Great Britain. Sci Data 6, 107 (2019). (Note this is for v1 which used a different methodology.)
Download citation	https://doi.org/10.1038/
Owner	Geographic Data Service
Temporal coverage	2022
Geographical coverage	England and Wales
Key link	Geographic Data Service: AHAH
Keywords	Health, Retail, Environment, Air quality
Participant count	TBC
Number of variables	21
Number of observations	34,753
Latest extract date	TBC
Specific restrictions to data use	None
Build a data request	TBC
Data owner version
3

Variables

Variable Group	Variable	Description	Source	Date range of data
Geographical	lsoa11	Lower Super Output Area code (2011)	Office of National Statistics	2011
Retail	ah3gamb	Distance to nearest Gambling Outlet (minutes)	Local Data Company	2019
Retail	ah3ffood	Distance to nearest Fast Food Outlet (minutes)	Local Data Company	2019
Retail	ah3pubs	Distance to nearest Pubs/Bars/Nightclub (minutes)	Local Data Company	2019
Retail	ah3tob	Distance to nearest Tobacconists/Vape Store (minutes)	Local Data Company	2019
Health	ah3gp	Distance to nearest GP Practice (minutes)	NHS England	Feb-22
Health	ah3hosp	Distance to nearest Hospital (minutes)	NHS England	Feb-22
Health	ah3dent	Distance to nearest Dentist (minutes)	NHS England	Jan-22
Health	ah3phar	Distance to nearest Pharmacy (minutes)	NHS England	Jan-22
Health	ah3phar	Distance to nearest Pharmacy (minutes)	NHS Wales	Nov-21
Health	ah3leis	Distance to nearest Leisure Centre (minutes)	Local Data Company	2019
Green/bluespace	ah3blue	Distance to nearest Blue space (minutes)	OpenStreetMap	2021
Green/bluespace	ah3gpas	NVDI value indicating Passive Green Space	Sentinel Satellite	2021
Air	ah3no2	Annual mean Nitrogen Dioxide (μgm³)	DEFRA	2019
Air	ah3pm10	Annual mean Particulate Matter (μgm³)	DEFRA	2019
Air	ah3so2	Annual mean Sulphur Dioxide (μgm³)	DEFRA	2019
Health	ah3h	Health Domain Score	Geographic Data Service	2022
Green/bluespace	ah3g	Green/Bluespace Domain Score	Geographic Data Service	2022
Air	ah3e	Air quality Domain Score	Geographic Data Service	2022
Retail	ah3r	Retail Domain Score	Geographic Data Service	2022
Healthy Assets and Hazards	ahah_index	Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards index score	Geographic Data Service	2022

Data Zones (DZ), Scotland

AHAH (the index of ‘Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards’) is a multi-dimensional index combining indicators under four different domains of accessibility: Retail environment (access to fast food outlets, pubs, tobacconists, gambling outlets), Health services (access to GPs, hospitals (NHS trust sites), pharmacies, dentists, leisure services), Physical environment (Blue Space, Green Space - Passive), and Air quality (NO₂, PM10, SO₂), this dataset covers Scotland.

Dataset Descriptor	Dataset-specific Information
Name of dataset in TRE	AHAH_geo_indicators_scotland
Citation (APA)	Daras, K., Green, M.A., Davies, A. et al. Open data on health-related neighbourhood features in Great Britain. Sci Data 6, 107 (2019). (Note this is for v1 which used a different methodology.)
Download citation	https://doi.org/10.1038/
Owner	Geographic Data Service
Temporal coverage	2022
Geographical coverage	Scotland
Key link	Geographic Data Service: AHAH
Keywords	Health, Retail, Environment, Air quality
Participant count	TBC
Number of variables	21
Number of observations	6,976
Latest extract date	TBC
Specific restrictions to data use	None
Build a data request	TBC
Data owner version
3

2. Variables

Variable Group	Variable	Description	Source	Date range of data
Geographical	lsoa11	Data Zones	gov.scot	2011
Retail	ah3gamb	Distance to nearest Gambling Outlet (minutes)	Local Data Company	2019
Retail	ah3ffood	Distance to nearest Fast Food Outlet (minutes)	Local Data Company	2019
Retail	ah3pubs	Distance to nearest Pubs/Bars/Nightclub (minutes)	Local Data Company	2019
Retail	ah3tob	Distance to nearest Tobacconists/Vape Store (minutes)	Local Data Company	2019
Health	ah3gp	Distance to nearest GP Practice (minutes)	NHS Scotland	Jan-22
Health	ah3hosp	Distance to nearest Hospital (minutes)	NHS Scotland	Dec-21
Health	ah3dent	Distance to nearest Dentist (minutes)	NHS Scotland	Jun-21
Health	ah3phar	Distance to nearest Pharmacy (minutes)	NHS Scotland	Oct-21
Health	ah3leis	Distance to nearest Leisure Centre (minutes)	Local Data Company	2019
Green/bluespace	ah3blue	Distance to nearest Blue space (minutes)	OpenStreetMap	2021
Green/bluespace	ah3gpas	NVDI value indicating Passive Green Space	Sentinel Satellite	2021
Air	ah3no2	Annual mean Nitrogen Dioxide (μgm³)	DEFRA	2019
Air	ah3pm10	Annual mean Particulate Matter (μgm³)	DEFRA	2019
Air	ah3so2	Annual mean Sulphur Dioxide (μgm³)	DEFRA	2019
Health	ah3h	Health Domain Score	Geographic Data Service	2022
Green/bluespace	ah3g	Green/Bluespace Domain Score	Geographic Data Service	2022
Air	ah3e	Air quality Domain Score	Geographic Data Service	2022
Retail	ah3r	Retail Domain Score	Geographic Data Service	2022
Healthy Assets and Hazards	ahah_index	Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards index score	Geographic Data Service	2022

2. Metrics#

TBC

3. Version History#

TBC

4. Documentation#

We are currently building a documentation storage system which will host relevant and useful documents related to datasets, groupings, and studies themselves.

5. Useful Syntax#

Data Linkage: England/Wales and Scotland each have their own geo indicator dataset, since England and Wales use the geographic unit of Lower Super Output Areas (LSOA) and Scotland uses Data Zones (DZ).

To link LLC_XXXX.CORE_nhsd_lsoa11_v0000_YYYYMMDD with LLC_XXXX.AHAH_geo_indicators_england_wales_v0000_YYYYMMDD LLC_XXXX.AHAH_geo_indicators_scotland_v0000_YYYYMMDD

To link LLC_XXXX.CORE_nhsd_lsoa11_v0000_YYYYMMDD with LLC_XXXX.AHAH_geo_indicators_england_wales_v0000_YYYYMMDD:

Retrieve data from database via helper syntax
Link datasets on the lsoa11cd_e field. Example of STATA syntax linking to England and Wales:

*load NHSD lsoa11 dataset

use “S:\LLC_9999\data\stata_w_labs\CORE_nhsd_lsoa11_v0001_20221217.dta”, clear

merge m: 1 lsoa11cd_e using “S:\LLC_9999\data\stata_w_labs\AHAH_geo_indicators_england_wales_20240731.dta” *drop geographical units not linked to any participant health record
drop if _merge ** 2

CORE_nhsd_lsoa11 is a long dataset typically with millions of rows, depending on size of data request. It is therefore recommended that you subset both or either of these datasets before linking/processing/saving. An example of this would be to select the quintile from the Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards Index that you are going to use and keep these variables only. This will ensure the dataset size remains as manageable as possible. It is also advised to only link to the country/ countries that you require.