Health Indicators provide a measure of the health status of an Individual, Group, Community or Country and compare it to other similar parameters that help us understand the areas rated well and poorly and allocate more resources to poor health. and also to monitor and reassess if patients are progressing towards a healthy state and to understand what measures should be taken. In other words, we understand the objectives and goals of a particular program that is being implemented to achieve better health goals.
The World Health Organization defines indicators as variables that have a negative range and a positive range in the likely observations. This gives an idea of how the progress of a particular program will go and when these indicators are measured periodically and sequentially over time, they can indicate the direction and speed of change and can help compare the health indications of different groups of people, communities or groups. countries.
Characteristics of the Indicators:
The Indicators that must be used in an evaluation must have the following characteristics so that they can be used in a campaign or survey.
1. An indicator must be valid and must be able to do the purpose for which it is intended.
2. An Indicator must be Reliable and Objective. This means that when different people carry out investigations on a similar experiment, they must more or less reach a similar inference using the same indicators.
3. An indicator must be sensitive and must respond variably to the situation at hand.
4. An Indicator must be Specific and must respond only to the variation of the specific situation in question.
5. An indicator must be feasible since it must have the attached functions that allow the corresponding data collection.
6. An indicator must be relevant, which means that it must be able to help understand the concept in question. It must either support the Hypothesis or rule out the Hypothesis in question.
Health is a multidimensional entity and each entity is a complex phenomenon in itself because each entity is affected by numerous factors some of which are known while many are still unknown.
Thus, Health is subject to the following Factors:
01. Mortality Indicators
02. Morbidity Indicators
03. Disability rates
04. Nutritional Status Indicators
05. Health service delivery indicators
06. Usage fees
07. Social and Metal Health Indicators
08. Environmental Indicators
09, Socioeconomic indicators
10. Health policy indicators
11. Quality of Life Indicators
12. Other indicators
Mortality Indicators and Morbidity Indicators
A. Mortality indicators
The indicators that indicate mortality in a community are:
1. Crude death rate
2. Life expectancy
3. Infant Mortality Rate
4. Infant Mortality Rate
5. Proportional mortality rate of children under 5 years of age
6. Maternal mortality rate (puerperal)
7. Disease-specific mortality
8. Proportional Mortality Rate
1. Crude death rate:
It is defined as the number of deaths per 1000 inhabitants per year in a given community. Here, a decrease in the mortality rate indicates better health conditions in the community, which indicates an overall increase in the health status of the given population, which is indeed a goal of medicine.
2. Life expectancy:
Life expectancy is the number of years a human can live, if the age- and sex-specific mortality rates of a population are known. Life expectancy is calculated at birth, at the age of 1 year, which excludes infant mortality, and at 5 years, which excludes infant mortality. Here too, an increase in average life expectancy is seen as an improvement in health status.
3. Infant mortality rate:
It is defined as the ratio between the number of deaths in children under 1 year of age and the total number of live births in the same year, usually expressed as a rate per 1,000 live births. This measure is capable of inferring about the health status of infants, also deductively from the entire population and the socioeconomic conditions under which infants and the entire population live.
4. Infant mortality rate:
It is defined as the ratio of the number of deaths of children aged 1 to 4 years per 1,000 children in the respective age group at the middle of the year in question for a particular area or community. This ratio indicates the overall health status of early childhood in a given community and excludes infant mortality.
5. Proportional mortality rate for children under 5 years of age:
When it is necessary to consider both infant mortality and early childhood mortality, these statistics are used when considering the total number of deaths of children under 5 years of age per 1,000 population. These statistics help infer about high birth rates, high infant mortality rates, and shorter life expectancies.
6. Maternal (puerperal) mortality rate:
The levels of maternal mortality differ from one country to another according to their socioeconomic conditions and the state that represents the proportion of deaths of women of reproductive age, which is generally higher in underdeveloped and developing countries. These data have not gained much importance in terms of statistical analysis and inference.
7. Disease-specific mortality:
This statistical analysis can be calculated for mortality from specific diseases. As communicable diseases are eliminated, other diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes have emerged as disease-specific problems.
8. Proportional Mortality Rate:
This statistical analysis takes into account the proportion of all deaths from each analysis mentioned above that are attributed to it.
B. Indicators of morbidity
These indicators indicate the burden of disease and poor health in a community, but they have their own limitations, since they represent only clinical cases and are represented as the iceberg theory.
The assessment points for ill health and disease in a community are:
1. Incidence and prevalence
2. Notification fees
3. Rates of attendance at health services
4. Admission, readmission and discharge fees
5. Length of hospital stay
6. Periods of illness or absence from work or school.
C. Disability rates
These fall into two categories, which are:
has. Event type indicators:
Yo. Number of days of restricted activity
ii. bed sick days
iii. days of work missed
b. Type of person indicators:
Yo. mobility limitation
ii. activity limitation
D. Indicators of nutritional status
These are namely:
- Measurements and proportions of preschool children.
- Heights and sometimes weights of school-age children
- The measurement of the frequency of births of babies under the category of low birth weight. In India, low birth weight is considered when the weight of the newborn is less than 2.5 kg.
E. Health service delivery indicators
This indicator shows us the health system units present in a given physical and geographic area that are providing health services whose data is grouped into the following categories:
- Physician-population relationship
- Doctor-nurse ratio
- Population-bed ratio
- Population by health/subcenter
- Population by traditional birth attendant
F. Utilization Rates
These measures are used to measure the use of health services and are measured in the following categories:
- Proportion of infants who have received the full immunization schedule.
- Proportion of pregnant women who have received complete antenatal care
- Percentage of the population that uses or adapts to various procedures under family planning
- Hospital bed occupancy rate
- Average stay of a patient in the hospital
Utilization Rates may differ by Geographic Area, climate, and surrounding habitat and environment. The list may also include more criteria based on the factors involved in creating the area.
G. Social health, mental health, environmental and socioeconomic indicators of health
Positive health is a rarity, nowadays. Thus, many times it is necessary to use symptoms and clinical pictures related to social and mental pathology. These indicators indicate socialism in the given area or community.
We also know that every living entity needs a good environment within acceptable limits for the living entity to remain healthy. The same aoolies to humans. The factors that affect Social and Mental Health are:
- Pollution
- Radiation
- solid waste
- Access to drinking water, etc.
Socioeconomic indicators do not directly measure health but help in the interpretation of health indicators
H. Health policy indicators
This makes them the most important informative rearrangement of symptoms in today’s society.
I. Other indicators may include:
- Quality of life indicators
- Basic needs indicators
- Health indicators for all
