Towards Comprehensive National Surveillance for Adolescent Health in China: Priority Indicators and Current Data Gaps

The purpose of the study was to propose a health indicator system responsive to current Chinese adolescent health needs and identify data gaps in current information systems.

We identified 186 keywords for adolescent health gathered from three sources: contributors to the burden of disease captured in the Global Burden of Diseases 2015, together with independent literature and expert desk reviews; major health-related policies released by the State Council of China; and global strategies issued by UN agencies over the past five years. All keywords were synthesized into indicators and ranked with core indicators identified through panel discussions and literature review. A further systematic review was conducted to identify data sources for each indicator.

We identified 100 indicators which we categorized into five dimensions: health outcomes including adolescent mortality and morbidity; health knowledge, skills and risk behaviors including smoking, physical activity; demographic and socioeconomic status including education or employment; responsiveness of the health service system including the provision of health education at school; and the physical and social environments including safe drinking water, secondhand smoke exposure, injuries, and bullying. In total, 72 indicators had nationally representative data, including 22 out of 24 core indicators (91.7%), 27 out of 33 potential core indicators (81.8%), and 23 out of 43 general indicators (53.5%). A large proportion of these indicators rely solely on data from school or household surveys.

The proposed health indicator system has the potential to rapidly identify shifting priorities for adolescent health in China but will require greater investment in primary data collection in neglected areas.