Description

Health Districts are areas used by Te Whatu Ora / Health New Zealand (HNZ) for delivering hospital, primary and community health services. They were established on 1 July 2022 under the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Act 2022.

Their boundaries are equivalent to former District Health Board (DHB) areas, with the exception of Capital and Coast being merged with Hutt Valley to form the Capital, Coast and Hutt Valley district for some administrative purposes. Both the merged and unmerged districts are available in this two-level classification.

Health Districts are defined at meshblock level.

Note that DHB boundaries were defined according to local government boundaries, as they existed on 1 June 2001 (defined by the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000). Therefore, although local government boundaries changed over time, DHB boundaries remained fixed according to the 2001 local government boundaries unless separate and specific action was taken to change them. DHB boundaries could only be changed by an Order of Council made under section 19(2) of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000.

For more information about Health Districts, refer to Te Whatu Ora / HNZ’s website:

https://www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/corporate-information/about-us/national-regional-and-local-health-services

Structure

Health District is a two-level classification.

At the first level is a 3 digit code representing the Health District by its Health Region.

At the second level is a 4 digit code representing Health District by its Health Region and distinguishing between Capital and Coast and Hutt Valley health districts.

For example, Central Region is coded 30. The five level-one health districts within Central Region are coded 300, 301, 302, 303 and 304. Capital, Coast and Hutt Valley Health District is then coded 3031 for ‘Capital and Coast’ and 3032 for ‘Hutt Valley’ in level-two of the classification.

Lineage

These boundaries are derived from the meshblock pattern. Using spatial processing tools, the meshblocks are dissolved to form higher-level geographies.

The original vertices delineating the meshblock boundary pattern were digitised in 1991 from 1:5,000 scale urban maps and 1:50,000 scale rural maps. The magnitude of error of the original digital points would have been in the range of +/- 10 metres in urban areas and +/- 25 metres in rural areas. Where meshblock boundaries coincide with cadastral boundaries the magnitude of error will be within the range of 1–5 metres in urban areas and 1-100 metres in rural areas, this being the estimated magnitude of error in Landonline.

High-definition version

This high definition (HD) version is the most detailed geometry, suitable for use in GIS for geometric analysis operations and for the computation of areas, centroids and other metrics.

Liability

While care has been taken to compile these boundary coordinates, Stats NZ gives no warranty that the data supplied is free from error. Stats NZ shall not be liable for any loss suffered through the use, directly or indirectly, of any information, product or service.

Macrons

Names are provided with and without tohutō/macrons. The column name for those without macrons is suffixed ‘ascii’.

Digital data

Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.

Further information

To download geographic classifications in table formats such as CSV please use Ariā

For more information please refer to the Statistical standard for geographic areas 2023.

Contact: geography@stats.govt.nz