Measuring public health

Early morning in a city in a country somewhere in the world. People take the bus, walk, or ride their bikes to school. You might wonder how they are? What’s their health like? How’s the public health?

While some are riding their bikes to school, others are still in bed, ill. So it varies how people feel. But can we say something about how the population feels, as a whole? Are there ways to measure health across a population? Yes, there are.

Let’s have a look at how to measure public health. In the early stages of humans’ lives, they are more vulnerable to certain diseases. If they get so seriously ill they die before the age of one, it’s called infant mortality. When we count the share of children who die before the age of one, we are calculating infant mortality, and this is one way of measuring public health. Infant mortality is low in countries with access to good health care, but if there is poor access to clean water and health care the risk of a child dying before she turns one is higher.

Infant mortality increases. When we count how many children die before they turn five, we calculate child mortality. This is another, but similar, measure of public health. The most common reason for a high child mortality rate is poverty. A child does not get enough food, and dies from malnutrition.

The birth of a child, the labour, can be risky for the mother. When a mother dies during labour, it is called maternal mortality. This is unusual if there is good healthcare, but if there is a lack of trained midwives, doctors or hospitals, or if there is no clean water, the risks for the mother increase, and the maternal mortality rate rises. We can also measure how old people get on average before they die. This is life expectancy.

If people live longer it means life expectancy is higher. If they have shorter lives it means life expectancy is lower. The most common cause of low life expectancy in a country is children dying before the age of five. So, high infant mortality and child mortality means low life expectancy. infant mortality, child mortality, maternal mortality, and life expectancy Here are four measures of public health.

Now we can measure public health in a whole population. And we can see how a country’s public health has developed over time and also compare between countries. Or, between different parts of the same country. And when we compare, it turns out people with more education and higher income usually live longer. They have a higher life expectancy.

There can be large differences in public health between groups within the same population or in the same city. Alfred got lung cancer when he was 42. He is very ill and will never recover. The life expectancy in his country is 82 years. So Alfred was expected to live until he became 82, another 40 years.

Instead, he got ill. Alfred lost 40 years of healthy living. When we measure these lost healthy years in a whole population, we call them Disability Adjusted Life Years. This is a measure of the spread of diseases in a country or a society. It is also a way of measuring public health.

The most common reasons for a higher number of lost healthy years are pneumonia and heart diseases. In all, it varies how healthy the people in the city are. But what we can say is that, in almost all parts of the world, public health has improved in recent years. There is: Lower infant mortality Lower child mortality Lower maternal mortality Longer life expectancy, and Fewer lost healthy years. And that goes for this city too.