IOM Proposes 20 Indicators to Measure Nation’s Health
Policymakers, the media, and the public should focus on 20 specific health indicators as "yardsticks" to measure the overall health and well-being of Americans, according to a new report from the Institute of Medicine. By providing information that can be compared over time, these 20 indicators also will help Americans track the nation's progress on improving our health and the effectiveness of public health and care systems, the report states.
The indicators are intended for the health section of a new Web site that the nonprofit State of the USA Inc. (SUSA) is building as a tool for measuring and monitoring the nation on several fronts. The site will aim to help people become more-informed and active participants in national discussions about important topics -- such as health, education, and the environment -- by giving them a way to measure national progress from year to year and to compare it to that of other countries. Until recently, only researchers and academics have had the capacity for this kind of analysis.
The 20 proposed indicators together provide a broad picture of Americans' health and the nation's health systems. They reflect a range of factors that determine well-being, including how many individuals engage in certain risky or healthy behaviors, how well patients fare from the care they receive, and to what extent health professionals and facilities are meeting specific goals.
SUSA asked IOM to recommend no more than 20 indicators of health, each with a substantial body of high-quality data behind it. Reputable organizations are generating new data on each of these markers annually, providing a reliable means to track changes over time. The data can be sorted by population subgroups or geographic region, allowing detailed analyses and comparisons. For example, one could use the data to compare current rates of obesity in different race and ethnic groups or to track whether the national obesity rate goes up or down over the next five years. Social and environmental factors -- such as income, race and ethnicity, education level, and pollution -- also influence people's health, noted the committee that wrote the report. The SUSA Web site will have sections devoted to education and the environment as well as other topics. Given the interconnectedness of health and these other areas, the committee urged SUSA to create links between the different sections that will enable visitors to see and explore these relationships.
"This report takes an important step of capturing the health of the American people with a few key indicators," said committee chair George J. Isham, medical director and chief health officer, HealthPartners Inc., Bloomington, Minn. "Given the gap between the relatively low performance and high costs of our health care system, data that is readily accessible on the Internet will be of great value in devising strategies to close this gap. We believe this set of measures, as deployed by the State of the USA project, can help move the nation toward better health."
More information on the report, State of the USA Health Indicators, can be found at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12534.