Characteristics and a List of Health Indicators

Anita Burrell, Department of Medicine, University of Florida Gainesville, Florida, United States, Email: anitaburrell20@gmail.com

Received: 26-Aug-2022, Manuscript No. AJPMPH-22-73487; Editor assigned: 30-Aug-2022, Pre QC No. AJPMPH-22-73487 (PQ); Reviewed: 14-Sep-2022, QC No. AJPMPH-22-73487; Revised: 20-Sep-2022, Manuscript No. AJPMPH-22-73487 (R); Published: 28-Sep-2022

Description

Health indicators are quantifiable traits of a population that academics use to substantiate claims about the population’s health. Typically, researchers will utilize a survey methodology to learn more about specific individuals, then use statistics to try to generalise the findings to the entire population. Finally, they will use the statistical analysis to draw conclusions about the population’s health. Governments frequently utilize health indicators to direct health care policy.

The life expectancy is a typical illustration of a health indicator. A government may have a system in place for gathering data on each citizen’s age at death. When used to support claims about the nation’s life expectancy, this information on age at death is known as a “health indicator.” One of the various “health indicators” that researchers may use to collectively assess the nation’s population’s health is life expectancy. To assess the health state of individuals and communities, health indicators are necessary.

Characteristics

The following qualities should be present in a health indicator that will be used internationally to describe global health:

• It should be described in a way that allows for consistent international measurement.
• It must be valid statistically.
• The indicator needs to have data that can be easily gathered.
• Data analysis must produce suggestions for actions that people can do to enhance their health.

List of health indicators

Crude death rate: The mortality rate is a calculation based on the population size of a population and represents the number of deaths per unit of time that are normally caused by, or due to, a certain cause, in that population. Mortality rate is the alternative name for the death rate. Typically, mortality rates are given as the number of deaths per 1,000 people per year. As a result, a mortality rate of 9.5 (out of 1,000) in a population of 1,000 would indicate 9.5 fatalities per year in that population, or 0.95% of the total. It differs from “morbidity,” which is the frequency or prevalence of a condition, and from the incidence rate, which is the number of newly diagnosed instances of the disease per unit of time. The term crude death rate is used to refer to the mortality rate from all causes of death for a population; this is determined by dividing the “total number of deaths over a specific time interval” by the “mid-interval population,” per 1,000 or 100.000.

Life expectancy: According to the year of birth, present age, and other demographic parameters like sex, an organism’s life expectancy can be calculated statistically as the length of time on average that it is predicted to live. Life Expectancy at Birth (LEB), which has two definitions, is the most frequently used metric. Cohort LEB is the average lifespan of a birth cohort (all people born in a given year), and it can only be calculated for cohorts whose members have all passed away. Period LEB is the average number of years that a hypothetical cohort would live if they were subjected to the annual mortality rates from birth to death.

Infant mortality rate: Infant mortality is the term used to describe infant deaths under the age of one. The Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), which is the likelihood of new born deaths per 1000 live births, is used to calculate this death toll. Given that the infant mortality rate only considers children less than one year of age, the under-five mortality rate, often known as the child mortality rate, is a significant statistic.

Maternal mortality rate: Several diverse health groups describe maternal mortality in slightly different ways. Maternal death, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is the passing away of a pregnant woman as a result of pregnancy-related problems, underlying conditions made worse by the pregnancy, or the treatment of these disorders. This could happen either while she’s pregnant or within six weeks of the pregnancy coming to an end. The one-year window following the termination of the pregnancy is added to the definition of pregnancy-related deaths by the CDC. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), pregnancy-associated deaths are all fatalities that happen within a year after a pregnancy’s resolution.

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