Global estimates of country health indicators: useful, unnecessary, inevitable?
Carla AbouZahr1, Ties Boerma2, Daniel Hogan2
1a CAZ Consulting , Geneva , Switzerland.
Background:
The MDG era relied on global health estimates to fill data gaps and ensure temporal and cross-country comparability in reporting progress. Monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals will present new challenges, requiring enhanced capacities to generate, analyse, interpret and use country produced data.
Objective:
To summarize the development of global health estimates and discuss their utility and limitations from global and country perspectives.
Design:
Descriptive paper based on findings of intercountry workshops, reviews of literatureon and synthesis of experiences.
Results:
Producers of global health estimates focus on the technical soundness of estimation methods and comparability of the results across countries and over time. By contrast, country users are more concerned about the extent of their involvement in the estimation process and hesitate to buy into estimates derived using methods their technical staff cannot explain and that differ from national data sources. Quantitative summaries of uncertainty may be of limited practical use in policy discussions where decisions need to be made about what to do next.
Conclusions:
Greater transparency and involvement of country partners in the development of global estimates will help improve ownership, strengthen country capacities for data production and use, and reduce reliance on externally produced estimates.
More Related Videos
05:35Author Spotlight: Developing a Point-of-Care Hemoglobin Estimation Method for Anemia Management
Published on: January 19, 2024
06:55Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting Propensity Score using the Military Health System Data Repository and National Death Index
Published on: January 8, 2020
Related Concept Videos
What are Estimates?
The estimate for the mean of a sample is denoted by ͞x, whereas the mean of the population is designated as μ. Further, parameters such...
Methods Of Healthcare Delivery System
Managed Care System:
The managed care system is designed to control the cost while maintaining the quality of care. The patient's care from admission to discharge is planned by the primary care provider or the case manager, also known as the gatekeeper. In a managed care system, the number of care providers is...
Statistical Methods for Analyzing Epidemiological Data
Bias in Epidemiological Studies
Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast,...
Primary Healthcare Services
In 1978, international leaders convened in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, for what would be a pivotal event in global health. The Alma-Ata Declaration was the first to call...
