Health Indicators: Indicators of Health, Types and Its Importance in Public health

Health Indicators: Indicators of Health, Types and Its Importance in Public health.
You are driving a car and suddenly you stop by seeing a traffic light turn red. You also notice that your fuel tank is going empty soon, and you are driving without wearing seat belt! These are some examples of indicators, that we come across in our day to day life!

To indicate means to show or signal direction or warning, or simply it suggest how much progress has been made! For example, water purifier you are using at your home shows the water level in the tank.

When we talk about country, level of literacy, homelessness or income tells us about the social indicators, while GDP, CPI or level of unemployment indicates economic status of the country.
Now, question may arise, what signals out the health situation of the country?
Here comes the importance of health indicators.

Friends, today we are going to talk about health indicators and it’s role in shaping the health status of the country, types of health indicators and which are the characteristics of health indicators.

Let us first talk about the uses of the health indicators.
Health indicators are used to measure health of the community, to describe the health of the community, to compare health of the different communities, identifying & prioritising their health needs, planning and evaluation of health services and last but not least to measure success of the action taken to improve the health of the community.

Now let us look at the characteristics of health indicators, which is almost true for any kind of indicators. Our indicators should valid, reliable, sensitive, specific, feasible and relevant.

Now valid means, they actually measure what they are supposed to measure!
And reliable means answers should same if measure by different people in similar situation!

Sensitive means they should reflect the changes in the situation concerned!
Specific means they should reflect changes only in the situation concerned.
Feasible when we are able obtain the necessary information.
And relevant means they should be related to phenomenon we are studying !
The purpose of these qualities of indicators is to be sure that we are comparing an apple with an apple!

In the health sector, indicators can tell us about the quality and effectiveness of various interventions or treatments.
They can tell us about health outcomes, quality of care, and even how well public money is
being spent.

Which are the types of Health indicators?
Well there are 12 different types of health indicators used in health.
Mortality indicators
Morbidity indicators
Disability rates
Nutritional status indicators
Health care delivery indicators
Utilisation rates
Indicators of social & mental health
Environmental indicators
Socio‐economic indicators
Health policy indicators
Indicators of quality of life.
Other indicators

Let us talk about some common examples of health indicators.

Infant mortality rate and Maternal mortality ratio are commonly used mortality indicators which indicates status of maternal and child health in the community.

Incidence rate and prevalence rate are commonly used morbidity indicators.

QALY (quality-adjusted life years) & DALY(disability-adjusted life years) indicators are used for disability.
The prevalence of LBW indicates the nutritional status of the community.

Doctors /patients/nurse ratio are an indicator of health care delivery.

An indicator acts like a flag that draws our attention to something that’s going on and makes us ask questions.
Questions like…
• What does this data mean?
When we look at trends, are we getting better than before?
• Why did we get this result?
• Are we providing the proper care? • How are we doing compared to,
peers or others? An indicator provides a standard way of measuring
and comparing a problem or area of focus. This standard and comparable information help us understand how well we are doing and where we could improve.

These indicators are expressed in quantitative
terms and help us measure things like appropriateness of care, quality, efficiency, and safety — and to give us a basis for comparisons.
So health indicators are vital tools to help
anyone who monitors and manages the health of a population and how services are being used.
Chapter
00:00 Intro What is an indicator?
01:30 -Uses/role of Health indicators
01:55 -Characteristics of Health indicators
03:07 -Types of health indicators
03:42 -Examples of Health indicators
04:25 -How indicators help policymakers

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