Indicators of Health
The Indicators of Health provide a measure for the health status of a Individual, Group, Community or a Country and to compare it with other similar parameters which help us to understand the good and the poorly assessed areas and to allocate more resources to the ill health and also to monitor and re-evaluate whether the ill are progressing towards a healthy status and to understand what all measures need to be done. In other words we understand the objectives and targets of a particular programme being implemented towards the attainment of better health goals.
Indicators are defined as Variables by the World Health Organisation which have a Negative range and a Positive range in probable observations. This gives an idea about how the progress of a particular programme will go and when these indicators are measured periodically and sequentially over time, they can indicate direction and speed of change and can help to compare the health indications of different groups of people, communities or countries.
Characteristics of Indicators :
The Indicators which should be used in an evaluation, should have the following characteristics so that it can be used in a campaign or a survey.
1. An Indicator should be valid and should be able to do the purpose of what it is intended to do
2. An Indicator should be Reliable and Objective. This means that when different people carry out research on a similar experiment they should, more or less arrive at a similar inference using the same indicators.
3. An Indicator should be Sensitive and should respond in variation to the situation concerned.
4. An Indicator should be Specific and should respond only to the variation of the specific situation in concern.
5. An Indicator should be feasible as it should have the functions attached to it which enable data collection concerned to it.
6. An Indicator should be relevant which means that it should be able to aid in understanding the concept in concern. It should either support the Hypothesis or discard the Hypothesis in concern.
Health is a Multi-Dimensional entity and each entity is a complex phenomenon in itself because the each entity is affected by numerous factors of which Some are Known while many are still Unknown.
Thus Health is subjected to the following Factors :
01. Mortality Indicators
02. Morbidity Indicators
03. Disability Rates
04. Nutritional Status Indicators
05. Health Care Delivery Indicators
06. Utilization Rates
07. Indicators of Social and Metal Health
08. Environmental Indicators
09, Socio-Economic Indicators
10. Health Policy Indicators
11. Indicators of Quality of Life
12. Other Indicators
Mortality Indicators and Morbidity Indicators
A. Mortality Indicators
The indicators indicating mortality in a community are :
1. Crude Death Rate
2. Expectation of life
3. Infant Mortality Rate
4. Child Moratality Rate
5. Under-5 Proportional Mortality Rate
6. Maternal (Puerperal) Mortality Rate
7. Disease specific Mortality
8. Proportional Mortality Rate