What is health status?
- An individual or population’s overall health
- Involves life expectancy, amount of disability and levels of disease risk factors
What are health indicators?
- Used to measure and compare health status
- E.g. life expectancy, mortality, morbidity, self-assessed health status, burden of disease
BSLMM
What are self-assessed health status?
One’s own perception of own health and wellbeing at a given point in time
What is life expectancy?
Number of years of life, on average, remaining to an individual at a particular age if death rates do not change
Why is life expectancy so important?
- Useful for comparing different countries and population groups
- Help assist governments and non-government organisations to identify areas for potential improvement.
What are some disadvantages of using life expectancy as a health indicator?
does not provide information on the health issues facing a country or population groups, such as the leading causes of death or emerging diseases. Although it is an important health status indicator, life expectancy doesn’t give any indication of the quality of life being experienced; it is based purely on the quantity, or length, of life
What are some disadvantages of using life expectancy as a health indicator?
- No info on health issues faced by country or population groups
- E.g Leading cause of death, emerging diseases
- No indication of quality of life being experienced as it’s based purely on quantity
What is HALE
- Stands for health-adjusted life expectancy
- Time lived in full health, without the health consequences of disease or injury
- Number of years one expected to live without reduced functioning (including decreased mobility and the decline in the functioning of body systems) due to ill health,
- Indicator of both quantity and quality of life.
What is mortality?
Number of deaths in a population in a given period (usually 12 months)
What is mortality rate?
Number of deaths, usually expressed per 1000 or 100,000 people in a 12-month period
Benefits of using mortality data
- Allows tends in deaths to be identified
- Trends help gov and organisations in developing and funding strategies that help reduce mortality rates from leading causes of death
- Help identity leading causes of death
- Trends help determine success of current interventions (e.g policies, campaigns)
- Allow predictions to be made about future so relevant interventions made to improve health status.
Others forms of mortality data
- Infant mortality rate
- under-five mortality rate
- maternal mortality ratio
What is Infant mortality rate
- Measures rate infant deaths before first birthday
- Usually expressed per 1000 live births
why is measuring Infant mortality rate so important?
- Indicate h + w of population and social and economic resources available.
- Reflect the ability of society to provide resources required to sustain human life.
- Infants and children rely on others to meet needs for food, water, healthcare. Thus, often have underdeveloped immune and other body systems –> more susceptible to premature mortality.
Factors that helped improves Under-five mortality rate
- More awareness of risk factors for illness and injury
- National vaccination programs
- Improved health services and technology
What is Maternal mortality rate
- Death of a mother during pregnancy, childbirth or within six weeks of delivery
- Usually measured per 100 000 women who give birth or per 100 000 live births
What is morbidity?
- Ill health in an individual and levels of ill health within a population
- Expressed through incidence and prevalence
What it incidence?
- Number/rate of new cases of a disease/condition in a population during given period
- E.g New COVID cases in 24 hours
What it prevalence?
- Total number/proportion of cases of disease/condition present in population at given time
- E.g total COVID cases in Australia
What is Burden of Disease
- Measures impact of diseases and injuries, mainly gap between current health status and ideal situation where one lives to an old age free of disease and disability
- Takes into account of mortality and morbidity
What is Burden of Disease measured in?
- Disability-adjusted life year (DALY)
What is DALY?
- 1 DALY = 1 year of healthy life lost, due to illness and/or death
- DALY = YLL + YLD
What is YLL
- Measure of how many years of expected life are lost due to premature death
- Younger when die from condition = greater YLL added for that condition
Example of YLL
- Person dies from cancer at 60, and life expectancy for 60-year-old is 85, then 25 years of life have been lost
- Thus, YLL is 25
