Population health metrics: crucial inputs to the development of evidence for health policy
Tóm tắt
Valid, reliable and comparable measures of the health states of individuals and of the health status of populations are critical components of the evidence base for health policy. We need to develop population health measurement strategies that coherently address the relationships between epidemiological measures (such as risk exposures, incidence, and mortality rates) and multi-domain measures of population health status, while ensuring validity and cross-population comparability. Studies reporting on descriptive epidemiology of major diseases, injuries and risk factors, and on the measurement of health at the population level – either for monitoring trends in health levels or inequalities or for measuring broad outcomes of health systems and social interventions – are not well-represented in traditional epidemiology journals, which tend to concentrate on causal studies and on quasi-experimental design. In particular, key methodological issues relating to the clear conceptualisation of, and the validity and comparability of measures of population health are currently not addressed coherently by any discipline, and cross-disciplinary debate is fragmented and often conducted in mutually incomprehensible language or paradigms. Population health measurement potentially bridges a range of currently disjoint fields of inquiry relating to health: biology, demography, epidemiology, health economics, and broader social science disciplines relevant to assessment of health determinants, health state valuations and health inequalities. This new journal will focus on the importance of a population based approach to measurement as a way to characterize the complexity of people's health, the diseases and risks that affect it, its distribution, and its valuation, and will attempt to provide a forum for innovative work and debate that bridge the many fields of inquiry relevant to population health in order to contribute to the development of valid and comparable methods for the measurement of population health and its determinants.
Tài liệu tham khảo
Murray CJL, Salomon JA, Mathers CD, Lopez AD, Eds:Summary measures of population health: concepts, ethics, measurement and applications. Geneva: World Health Organization 2002. [http://www.who.int/pub/smph/en/index.html]
Evans DB, Murray CJL, Tandon A, Lauer J: The comparative efficiency of national health systems: a global cross-national econometric analysis. British Medical Journal 2001, 323: 307-310. 10.1136/bmj.323.7308.307
Hutubessy RC, Baltussen RMPM, Tan Torres-Edejer T, Evans DB: Generalized cost-effectiveness analysis: an aid to decision making in health. Applied Health Economics and Health Policy 2002,1(2):39-46.
Gakidou EE, King G: Measuring total health inequality: Adding individual variation to group-level differences. International Journal for Equity in Health 2002, 1: 3. 10.1186/1475-9276-1-3
Ezzati M, Lopez AD, Rodgers A, Vander Hoorn S, Murray CJL, Comparative Risk Assessment Collaborative Group: Selected major risk factors and global and regional burden of disease. Lancet 2002, 360: 1347-1360. 10.1016/S0140-6736(02)11403-6
Bowling A: Measuring health: a review of quality of life measurement scales. Buckingham UK: Open University Press 1991.
McDowell I, Newell C: Measuring health: a guide to rating scales and questionnaires 2 Edition Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996.
Sadana R: Development of standardized health state descriptions. In Summary measures of population health: concepts, ethics, measurement and applications (Edited by: Murray CJL, Salomon JA, Mathers CD, Lopez AD). Geneva: World Health Organization 2002.
Sen A: Health: perception versus observation. British Medical Journal 2002, 324: 860-861. 10.1136/bmj.324.7342.860
Sadana R, Mathers CD, Lopez AD, Murray CJL, Moesgaard-Iburg K: Comparative analysis of more than 50 household surveys of health status. In Summary measures of population health: concepts, ethics, measurement and applications (Edited by: Murray CJL, Salomon JA, Mathers CD, Lopez AD). Geneva: World Health Organization 2002.
Robine JM, Jagger C, Romieu I: Disability-free life expectancies in the European Union countries: calculation and comparisons. Genus 2001,57(2):89-101.
Mathers CD, Robine JM: Health expectancy indicators: a review of the work of REVES to date. In Calculation of health expectancies, harmonization, consensus achieved and future perspectives. (Colloque INSERM Vol. 226) (Edited by: Robine JM, Mathers CD, Bone MR, Romieu I). France: John Libbey Eurotext and Les Editions INSERM 1993.
De Bruin A, Picavet HSJ: Health interview surveys: towards international harmonization of methods and instruments. (WHO Regional Publications, European Series, No. 58) Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe 1996.
Murray CJL, Tandon A, Salomon JA, Mathers CD, Sadana R: New approaches to enhance cross-population comparability of survey results. In Summary measures of population health: concepts, ethics, measurement and applications (Edited by: Murray CJL, Salomon JA, Mathers CD, Lopez AD). Geneva: World Health Organization 2002.
Murray CJL, Salomon JA, Mathers CD, Lopez AD: Summary measures of population health: conclusions and recommendations. In Summary measures of population health: concepts, ethics, measurement and applications (Edited by: Murray CJL, Salomon JA, Mathers CD, Lopez AD). Geneva: World Health Organization 2002.
United Nations:Implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration: report of the Secretary General. (United Nations General Assembly Document A/57/270) 2002. [http://www.undp.org/mdg/SGFirstProgressReportonMDGs.pdf]
Commission on Macroeconomics and Health: Macroeconomics and health: investing in health for economic development. Geneva: World Health Organization 2001.
Bracken MB: Commentary: toward systematic reviews in epidemiology. International Journal of Epidemiology 2001, 30: 954-957. 10.1093/ije/30.5.954