World Health Organization Publication : Year 2002 - Summary Mueasures of Population Health : Concepts, Ethics, Measurement and Applications, Chapter 3.9: Chapter 9 ; Levels of Health and Inequality in Health

By Michael C. Wolfson

Book Id: WPLBN0000163766
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 0.1 MB
Reproduction Date: 2005

Title:	World Health Organization Publication : Year 2002 - Summary Mueasures of Population Health : Concepts, Ethics, Measurement and Applications, Chapter 3.9: Chapter 9 ; Levels of Health and Inequality in Health
Author:	Michael C. Wolfson
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Health., Public health, Wellness programs
Collections:	Medical Library Collection, World Health Collection
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	World Health Organization


Citation APA MLA Chicago C. Wolfso, B. M. (n.d.). World Health Organization Publication : Year 2002 - Summary Mueasures of Population Health : Concepts, Ethics, Measurement and Applications, Chapter 3.9. Retrieved from http://gutenberg.cc/

Description
Medical Reference Publication

Excerpt
As I noted in chapter 2.2, by far, the most fundamental use of summary measures of population health (SMPH) is to shift the centre of gravity of health policy discourse towards the basic objective of health policy, namely improving the health of the population. Without valid and broadly accepted measures of health, it is much more difficult to focus resources and activities in ways that have the most beneficial impact in improving health. And analogously with the economy and incomes, there are always concerns about both the average levels of health in the population and the pattern or distribution of health among individual members of the population. A fundamental question of indicator design is how to measure not only levels, but also dispersion or inequalities in health. As part of the discussion at the conference that gave rise to this volume, objections were raised that this question had already been answered. SMPH, it was claimed, by their very nature, already embodied—indeed even obfuscated—strong normative judgements about the distribution of health. As a matter of arithmetic, it is absolutely correct that any given SMPH defines an “equivalence class” where distributional changes have no effect. For example, given all the specific details of the micro-level descriptive system, the micro-level valuation function, and the macro-level aggregation formula (see chapter 2.2), an infinite range of examples can be constructed in accord with the following: reducing person i’s health by x, and increasing person j’s health by y, leaves the arithmetical value of the SMPH unchanged.

Table of Contents
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