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Email us at: knowledgeandIntelligence@suffolk.gov.uk
Sickle Cell Awareness Month and JSNA Profile
September is Sickle Cell Awareness Month, an opportunity to raise awareness and understanding of sickle cell disorder (SCD), an inherited blood condition that affects the shape and function of red blood cells. People living with sickle cell can experience episodes of severe pain and other serious complications, and may require ongoing healthcare support throughout their lives.
People with sickle cell disorder produce unusually shaped red blood cells that can block blood vessels and restrict oxygen supply. This can trigger a ‘sickle cell crisis’, which causes severe pain and some serious complications can be life-threatening
To support local awareness, Suffolk's JSNA team has published a new Sickle Cell Profile 2026, bringing together information on the condition, affected populations and relevant local context. The profile aims to improve understanding of sickle cell as both a health and health inequalities issue, helping local organisations, services and communities consider how care, support and awareness can be strengthened. You can read the profile here: Sickle Cell Profile 2026.
- In Suffolk, the number of people living with Sickle Cell is small (within a range of around 90-120 individuals) but important.
- The condition requires lifelong management, coordinated care, and responsive services that can meet both routine and urgent needs.
- As Suffolk’s population continues to diversify, there is a clear need to understand the local profile of Sickle Cell, including who is affected, how needs present across the life course, and how well services are currently meeting those needs.
The profile brings together available evidence to provide an overview of Sickle Cell in Suffolk.
It aims to:
- describe the local population affected by Sickle Cell
- identify key health and wellbeing needs
- highlight inequalities in access, experience, and outcomes
- support commissioners and providers to plan services that are equitable, responsive, and person-centred
JSNA Data Dashboard Updates
A number of the key interactive dashboards that support the Suffolk JSNA have recently been refreshed and updated, including the Employment, Economy and Skills, Housing and Environment, Population, and Health dashboards. These resources are used by colleagues and partners across the system to explore local need, monitor trends, and understand inequalities at a local level.
Keeping data up to date is about more than accuracy. Regularly refreshed, automated dashboards help ensure that decision-makers are working from a current evidence base, reducing reliance on manual data updates and one-off extracts. This creates more time for analysis, interpretation and action, while giving users greater confidence that the information they are using reflects the latest available evidence.
The refresh also supports the wider ambition of moving from static reports towards a more dynamic evidence system. While needs assessments and analytical reports remain essential, regularly updated dashboards provide a up to date view of changing patterns and trends. Together, these products help create a stronger evidence base for planning services, understanding inequalities and identifying emerging issues affecting Suffolk communities.
These dashboards also help make the JSNA more accessible. Not everyone has the time to read a full needs assessment or lengthy report to find the data, but interactive dashboards allow users to quickly explore the data that matters to them, whether that is their locality, population group or topic area. By bringing together trusted datasets in a visual and user-friendly format, the dashboards support evidence-informed conversations across organisations and help ensure that insight can be translated into practical action.
An example from the Health dashboard:
View our JSNA products using the JSNA searchable index below:
Four for you - Recent national publications:
- ‘You really are on your own’: a study of the early deaths of young people who were in care: This review, aims to understand the circumstances surrounding care leaver deaths and identify lessons for policy and practice to help prevent future deaths. It examines all care leaver death notifications in 2025, identifying key themes and selecting representative young people for more detailed exploration.
- State of Ageing Spotlight: Older LGBTQ+ people: This Centre for Ageing Better report addresses the invisibility of older LGBTQ+ people in data and in discussions about the ageing population.
- Children in crisis: Mental health pressures in emergency departments - quick read report: Published in September 2026, this quick read from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health presents data about A&E attendances among children and young people between 2019 and 2025 in England. It includes insights from clinicians, children and families and recommendations for improving mental health support and care pathways.
- Births in England and Wales: 2025 (final rates): Office for National Statistics data on live births, stillbirths, maternities and fertility rates by factors including age, parents' country of birth, ethnicity, gestational age, and birthweight.
This month the JSNA workplan is focused on:
- Finalising a women's health profile
- Finalising an inclusion health profile
- Continuing work on a new sexual and reproductive health needs assessment
- Scoping new profiles on the end of life, alcohol, substance misuse, and respiratory health
- Planning for the Annual Public Health Report 2026
The Suffolk Observatory
The Suffolk Observatory contains all Suffolk’s vital statistics. It is the one-stop-shop for data, statistics and reports all about Suffolk provided by a variety of organisations.
Through data, reports and analysis, the Suffolk Observatory provides a comprehensive picture of the county and is a great source for useful facts and figures that will help you write reports and presentations, inform strategic and business planning, prepare funding applications or support academic research.
