Summary Measures of Population Health

Synonyms

Health indexes

Definition

Summary measures of population health are health indexes derived from other indicatorsto represent the health of a particular population. They are widely used for comparisons of health status between populations or of the population at different points in time, identifying and quantifying overall health inequalities within populations, identifying priorities for health service delivery, research and development, and analyzing the benefits of health interventions. Summary measures should be comprehensible and practicable to calculate, and should preferably be linear aggregates of the other measures of health events. Ideally, they must reflect the changes of health status of the population, i. e. if the state of health of a given population worsens then a summary measure should get worse, or if mortality or morbidity rates decrease, a summary measure should improve. The most widely used summary health...