About this release

This quarterly release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) of the Health in the Early Years in Scotland (HEYS) Dashboard presents data on measures related to breastfeeding and early child development in Scotland. This includes: exclusive breastfeeding; overall breastfeeding; and 'ever breastfed', based on data collected at Health Visitor reviews at 10-14 days and 6-8 weeks; and developmental concerns based on data collected at reviews at 13-15 months, 27-30 months and 4-5 years. For all measures data are presented for each Health Board and Council Area of Residence (based on home postcode). Additional data is presented in this release showing breakdowns by developmental domain at Health Board and Council Area level.
This release includes data up to and including December 2024 for all indicators.

Background

This dashboard has been developed by Public Health Scotland to provide timely, quarterly information on health outcomes among children in Scotland. It also exists as a sister dashboard to the Scottish Pregnancy, Births and Neonatal Dashboard (SPBAND).

Public Health Scotland recognise that different ways of looking at the data are helpful so this dashboard offers a choice of data views, including time series charts to allow comparison (for a particular measure) across Health Board/Council areas. It also includes data download functionality with metadata to facilitate users doing their own analyses.

Further information

Data are shown for up to and including the most recent period for which records are considered near complete. Data for the most recent period should be viewed as provisional as they are likely to change slightly as additional records are submitted to PHS. Data for the whole time period shown will be refreshed every time the dashboard page is updated.

Further analysis and interpretation of annual rates and trends for some measures shown on this dashboard will also be published in the following PHS annual reports:

The next release of this publication will be 01 July 2025.

General enquiries

If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please contact Dr Lynda Fenton at phs.childhealthstats@phs.scot.

Media enquiries

If you have a media enquiry relating to this publication, please contact the Communications and Engagement team.

Requesting other formats and reporting issues

If you require publications or documents in other formats, please email phs.otherformats@phs.scot.

To report any issues with a publication, please email phs.generalpublications@phs.scot.

Older versions of this publication

Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.

Last updated: 25 March 2025
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