title: Can health indicators help policy-makers? Experience from European system of urban health indicators (EURO-URHIS).
abstract: This paper proposes that Population Impact Measures (PIMs), the Population Impact Number of Eliminating a Risk Factor over a time period (PIN-ER-t) and the number of events prevented in your population (NEPP), can assist in policy making as they include relevant information which describes the impact or benefits to the population of risk factors and interventions. In this study, we explore the utilization of the indicators from European System of Urban Health Indicators System to produce the two PIMs. We identified from the indicators list the health determinants, health status and health interventions which can be linked, and searched Medline for evidence of association. We then investigated whether the type of frequency measure available for the indicator match with the measure used in PIMs, and explored data availability for the City of Manchester (UK) as an urban area. Of the 39 indicators relevant to socio-economic factors, health determinants and health status, it was possible to calculate the population impact of a risk factor, i.e. the PIN-ER-t, for only six associations, and the population impact of health interventions, i.e. NEPP, for only one out of the three listed indicators, as the relevant health conditions were not included. The results of this study suggest that if an indicator system is intended to play a part in the policy making process, then the method of presentation to policy-makers should be decided before setting up the system, as it is likely that some indicators which would be essential might not be available.
authors.affiliation: 1 Manchester Urban Collaboration on Health, Centre for Epidemiology, Institute for Population Health, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PT, UK.
authors.forename: Perihan
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Torun
authors.affiliation: 2 Evidence for Population Health Unit, Division of Epidemiology and Health Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PT, UK.
authors.forename: Richard F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Heller
authors.affiliation: 1 Manchester Urban Collaboration on Health, Centre for Epidemiology, Institute for Population Health, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PT, UK.
authors.forename: Annie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Harrison
authors.affiliation: 1 Manchester Urban Collaboration on Health, Centre for Epidemiology, Institute for Population Health, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PT, UK.
authors.forename: Arpana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Verma
mesh_terms: D000288:Administrative Personnel; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D011050:Policy Making; D012307:Risk Factors; D014504:Urban Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019037:Urban Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration; D014505:Urban Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data