A composite metric for assessing data on mortality and causes of death: the vital statistics performance index.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Timely and reliable data on causes of death are fundamental for informed decision-making in the health sector as well as public health research. An in-depth understanding of the quality of data from vital statistics (VS) is therefore indispensable for health policymakers and researchers. We propose a summary index to objectively measure the performance of VS systems in generating reliable mortality data and apply it to the comprehensive cause of death database assembled for the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2013 Study.

Methods

We created a Vital Statistics Performance Index, a composite of six dimensions of VS strength, each assessed by a separate empirical indicator. The six dimensions include: quality of cause of death reporting, quality of age and sex reportin

SUBMITTER: Phillips DE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4060759 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature