Metrics for Global Health Status
It is important to understand how health is measured on a global scale. There are some metrics for assessing health and well-
being that are unique to global health contexts. For this SLP Assignment:
. Life expectancy is the most commonly used measure to aggregate mortality data in order to describe a
population's health. It measures how many years, on average, a person is expected to live based on current age and
sex-specific death rates.
M onitor the health status to identify and solve community health problems includes the accurate diagnosis of the
community's health status; identification of threats to health and assessment of health service needs; timely collection,
analysis, and publication of information on access, utilization, costs, and outcomes .
1. Define the following and provide an example for each Key Health Status Indicator:
Infant mortality rate
Handbook of Vital Statistics Systems and Methods, Volume 1: Legal, Organisational and Technical Aspects, United
Nations Studies in Methods, Glossary, Series F, No. 35, United Nations, New York 1991.
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/infantmortality.htm
Life expectancy at birth
https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-birth.htm
Paul F.M. Krabbe, in The Measurement of Health and Health Status, 2017
Why the world needs global health initiatives
Dr Margaret Chan
Director-General of the World Health Organization
Venice, Italy
22 June 2009
Maternity mortality ratio
International Classification of Diseases (ICD)
International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, Geneva, World Health Organization, 2004
Maternal mortality in 2000
Maternal Mortality Estimates developed by WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2004.
Reproductive Health Indicators: Guidelines for their generation, interpretation and analysis
for global monitoring. WHO, 2006.
Under-5 mortality rate
United Nations (2008). World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision. New York.
Health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE)
Health systems performance assessment: debates, methods and empiricism. Mathers CD, et al. Methods for
Measuring Healthy Life Expectancy. In: Murray CJL, Evans D, eds. Health systems performance assessment:
debates, methods and empiricism. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2003.
Disability-adjusted life year (DALY)
Murray CJ et al. Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for 291 diseases and injuries in 21 regions, 1990-2010: a
systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. Lancet,380(9859): 2197-223, 2012.
2. If you could select only one indicator to describe the health status of a developing country, which indicator would you pick
and why?
Be sure to use credible, professional, and scholarly sources such as peer-reviewed journal articles from the Online Library, and
government, university, or nonprofit organizations’ Web sites.
Length: 3-4 pages (excluding the cover page and reference list), double-spaced.
