Measuring global health inequity.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Notions of equity are fundamental to, and drive much of the current thinking about global health. Health inequity, however, is usually measured using health inequality as a proxy - implicitly conflating equity and equality. Unfortunately measures of global health inequality do not take account of the health inequity associated with the additional, and unfair, encumbrances that poor health status confers on economically deprived populations.

Method

Using global health data from the World Health Organization's 14 mortality sub-regions, a measure of global health inequality (based on a decomposition of the Pietra Ratio) is contrasted with a new measure of global health inequity. The inequity measure weights the inequality data by regional economic capacity (GNP per c

SUBMITTER: Reidpath DD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2147004 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature