1.

The Global Reference List of 100 Core Health Indicators is a standard set of 100
indicators prioritized by the global community to provide concise information
on the health situation and trends, including responses at national and global
levels. It will be reviewed and updated periodically as global and country
priorities evolve and measurement methods improve. This publication contains
the 2015 version.
2. Statistics refers to both quantitative data, and the classification of such data in
accordance with probability theory and the application to them of methods such
as hypothesis testing. Health statistics include both empirical data and estimates
related to health, such as mortality, morbidity, risk factors, health service
coverage, and health systems.
3. Health Statistics provide information for understanding, monitoring, improving
and planning the use of resources to improve the lives of people, provide
services and promote their well being.
4. Many countries are now developing new datasets and publishing information
from Electronic Health Record (EHR) data for the purpose of quality
improvement and monitoring healthcare performance.

5. Important Features of Health Statistics and Data Sets

The Importance of Health Data

Health statistics and data are important because they measure a wide range of
health indicators for a community. A community can be the entire United States,
a region, state, county, or city. Health data provide comparisons for clinical
studies, can be used to assess costs of health care, can help identify needed
prevention targets for such programs as Healthy People 2010, and are important
for program planning and evaluation by finding a baseline against which to
measure in the evaluation phase.

The Context of Health Statistics

Health statistics are influenced by an organization’s perspective and bias. These

biases can affect the collection device and eventual outcomes that are reported.
They also can determine what data are collected and how the data are collected.
Whenever possible, read the notes describing the reasons for and methods of
data collection. Remember that statistics are collected to meet the needs of the
collector.

The populations covered by different data collections systems may not be the
same. Data on vital statistics and national expenditures cover the entire
population. Most data on morbidity and utilization of health resources cover
only the civilian non-institutionalized population.

Some information is collected in more than one survey and estimates of the
same statistic may vary among surveys. For example, the National Health
Interview Survey, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the Monitoring
the Future Survey, and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey all measure cigarette
use. But estimates of cigarette use may differ among these surveys because of
different survey methodologies, sampling frames, questionnaires, definitions,
and tabulation categories.

Key Features of Health Statistics

Health statistics are population based, and many are collected and analyzed over
time. Statistics often use geographic regions such as zip codes for determining
health care coverage and comparisons of specific disease occurrences. Most
studies focus on variation over time, space, and social group.

Health Statistics Come from Diverse Sources

Many studies use administrative data. Administrative data, according to the

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), include enrollment or
eligibility information, claims information, and managed care encounters. The
claims and encounters may be for hospital and other facility services,
professional services, prescription drug services, laboratory services, or other
services.

Surveys are designed to collect specific data and are often conducted by trained
personnel who administer them by telephone or in-person.

CDC states that public health surveillance is the systematic collection, analysis,
interpretation, and dissemination of health data on an ongoing basis, to gain
knowledge of the pattern of disease occurrence and potential in a community in
order to control and prevent disease in the community

Health statistics are numbers about some aspect of health. Statistics about births,
deaths, marriages, and divorces are sometimes called "vital statistics."
Researchers use statistics to see patterns of diseases in groups of people. This
can help in figuring out who is at risk for certain diseases, finding ways to
control diseases and deciding which diseases should be studied.

This chapter provides a definition of health statistics, the purpose of health

statistics, and an overview of their many uses. It describes the broad scope of
health statistics and a model of population health to guide the health statistics
enterprise in its goal of providing comprehensive, coherent, and useful data with
which populations can create fundamental knowledge, guide their health
policies, and implement and refine their health programs and other interventions
to improve health
Medical statistics deals with applications of statistics to medicine and the health
sciences, including epidemiology, public health, forensic medicine, and clinical
research. Medical statistics has been a recognized branch of statistics in the
United Kingdom for more than 40 years but the term has not come into general
use in North America, where the wider term 'biostatistics' is more commonly
used.[1]
 The online database OECD Health Statistics 2017 has been
released on 30 June and updated on 10 November 2017. 

The datasets for Pharmaceutical Market and Health Care

Quality Indicators have both been updated in November 2017
and are now available!
 
The OECD Health Database offers the most comprehensive
source of comparable statistics on health and health systems
across OECD countries. It is an essential tool to carry out
comparative analyses and draw lessons from international
comparisons of diverse health systems.

The GHO data repository contains an extensive list of indicators, which can be selected by
theme or through a multi-dimension query functionality. It is the World Health Organization's
main health statistics repository.

The National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) gathers information on family life, marriage and
divorce, pregnancy, infertility, use of contraception, and men’s and women’s health. The
survey results are used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and others to
plan health services and health education programs, and to do statistical studies of families,
fertility, and health. Links to some of those studies are included on this web site, under
“Publications and Information Products.”