Inequalities of health indicators for policy makers: six hints

Excerpt

Monitoring health inequalities has now become an increasingly important challenge and priority for public health surveillance. When policy makers decide to monitor inequalities in health, they will have to select one or more measures of inequality, hopefully based on scientific advice or reviews (Wagstaff et al. 1991; Mackenbach and Kunst 1997; Regidor 2004a, b; Asada 2005; Harper et al. 2008). Because different indicators can have different interpretations and their computation can result in different conclusions (Harper et al. 2010), policy makers should be aware of the consequences of a specific choice in favor of one indicator over another in order to provide an optimal application of the results toward policy action (Petticrew et al. 2004; Whitehead et al. 2004). This Hints and Kinks paper suggests a minimal background for policy makers needed when selecting measures of health inequality and discussing with their equity analysts. We identify six concerns related to the choice of measures of health inequality (Harper and Lynch 2005; Speybroeck et al. 2012): …