Towards a global monitoring system for implementing the Rio Political Declaration on Social Determinants of Health: developing a core set of indicators for government action on the social determinants of health to improve health equity

In the 2011 Rio Political Declaration on Social Determinants of Health, World Health Organization (WHO) Member States pledged action in five areas crucial for addressing health inequities. Their pledges referred to better governance for health and development, greater participation in policymaking and implementation, further reorientation of the health sector towards reducing health inequities, strengthening of global governance and collaboration, and monitoring progress and increasing accountability. WHO is developing a global system for monitoring governments’ and international organizations’ actions on the social determinants of health (SDH) to increase transparency and accountability, and to guide implementation, in alignment with broader health and development policy frameworks, including the universal health coverage and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agendas. We describe the selection of indicators proposed to be part of the initial WHO global system for monitoring action on the SDH.

An interdisciplinary working group was established by WHO, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research—Institute of Population and Public Health. We describe the processes and criteria used for selecting SDH action indicators that were of high quality and the described the challenges encountered in creating a set of metrics for capturing government action on addressing the Rio Political Declaration’s five Action Areas.

We developed 19 measurement concepts, identified and screened 20 indicator databases and systems, including the 223 SDG indicators, and applied strong criteria for selecting indicators for the core indicator set. We identified 36 suitable existing indicators, which were often SDG indicators.

Lessons learnt included the importance of ensuring diversity of the working group and always focusing on health equity; challenges included the relative dearth of data and indicators on some key interventions and capturing the context and level of implementation of indicator interventions.