The Roundtable on Population Health Improvement of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine (formerly known as the Institute of Medicine) has published this workshop summary on measures for population health improvement. There is an overabundance of measures and indicators available for measuring various aspects of population health. While there have been multiple efforts to examine the nature, validity, uses, and usefulness of existing measures with the goal of simplifying existing sets to meet the needs of all decision makers, from policymakers to communities, there has not been much success in meeting that goal.
The July 2015 workshop had several objectives: 1) to highlight existing and emerging population health metrics sets and explored their purposes, areas of overlap and gaps; 2) to highlight population health metrics with attention to equity and disparities; 3) to discuss characteristics of metrics necessary for stakeholder action across multiple sectors whose engagement is needed to transform the conditions for health in communities; and 4) to highlight population health metrics useful to addressing health beyond health care and engaging “total population health,” again, across multiple sectors.
The workshop summary is available for downloading.
Ignatius Bau 