Summary measures of population health. An overview

The objective of the paper is to give a conceptual overview of old and new measures of a nation's state of health with special focus on new measures seeking to combine mortality with morbidity, functional and quality of life dimensions. Internationally, the development has given rise to two different movements. One (in Denmark and the EU) aims to develop a large number of standardised indicators, while the other (the WHO and the World Bank) builds on the idea that it must be possible to combine the many indicators into a single summary measure of a nation's state of health. In the summary measures, distinction is made between health expectancies and health gap measures. Attention is given to reviewing DALY (disability-adjusted life years), disability weights, and the social value choices applied in WHO's World Health Report 2000.