Measuring Health and Disease in Community Health Flashcards
Why measure health or disease?
to improve the health status of a population
- We try to measure diseases and collect information on the health status of a population in order to make a community diagnosis
Main reasons for measuring health and disease of a population?
- identifying and prioritising health problems for action
- collecting information for planning and management of health care.
- collecting information for evaluation of health care and disease control programmes
- early detection and surveillance of epidemic illness and surveillance of endemic illness
- identifying determinants of disease so as to enable us to prevent them
Who need information about the health status of a community or population?
- Health workers
- health planners and health service managers (DHO’s, staff of the MOHP, health programme managers)
- researchers
- lecturers at health training institutions
- general public
What information is required to make a health profile of a community?
- demographic
- socio-economic
- geographical
- vital statistics
- morbidity and mortality
- health services and health care providers
- environmental health
Examples of demographic information?
- total population and its sex, age and geographical distribution
- population growth rate
Examples of socio-economic information?
- ethnic groups
- political structure
- means of subsistence
- average income
- cultural background
- level of education)
Examples of geographical information?
- distances within the district
- location of villages and towns
- roads
- transport
- other means of communication
- accessibility of areas
Examples of vital statistics?
- crude birth rate
- crude death rate
- annual growth rate
- fertility rate
Examples of information on morbidity and mortality?
incidence/prevalence of diseases and their mortality rates `top ten’ of morbidity or mortality
Examples of information on health services and health care providers?
- number of health institutions range of services provided
- coverage
- utilisation
Examples of information on environmental health?
- water supplies
- excreta disposal
- hygiene
Where and how to collect information about the health status of a community?
- observation (“look and listen”) - qualitative information.
- resource persons
e.g. DHO, RHO, health workers, community leaders, project managers - hospital/clinic data
e.g. admission book, OPD register, maternity register, operation theatre register, quarterly returns - special registers
e.g. deaths, births, notifiable diseases, tb-register - reports
e.g. census reports, hospital annual reports, project reports, research reports - surveys
e.g. qualitative and quantitative surveys
What are health indicators?
- used to describe the health status of a population or the level of disease present in a population
- Health indicators are a measure that describe the health situation or its changes over time
Categories of health indicators?
- Health status indicators
- Morbidity indicators
- Mortality indicators
- Indicators of nutritional status - Health service indicators
- Health policy indicators
- Health related socio-economic indicators
What are morbidity indicators?
Morbidity indicators describe the frequency of disease