Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #109593

David T. Huang, MSOR, MSHS, W. Brad Jones, MSIE, Julie A. Jacko, PhD, and François Sainfort, PhD. School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 755 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0205, (404) 441-3450, dhuang@isye.gatech.edu

Our research aims to develop an alternative assessment technique to promote more equitable comparisons of national health systems around the world. This research is based on the World Health Organization (WHO) World Health Report 2000, which ranked all national health systems simultaneously and suggested methods to improve their performance. Recognizing that these health systems are not all identical, we propose a technique that creates clusters of nations by stratifying them according to several factors that the literature confirms should have an effect on the efficiency of a national health system. Our methodology incorporates data collected from several WHO reports and publications, as well as the World Bank's educational statistics web site. The resulting clustering technique generates several clusters of peer nations based on factors including mortality levels, causes of healthy life loss, DALE (disability-adjusted life expectancy) measures, health care expenditures, and education levels. This leads to a more equitable comparison scheme by ranking nations within a cluster of peers rather than comparing all nations at once.

We believe that this clustering technique and its resulting rankings are a constructive way to build upon the work and contribute to the dialogue that has been started by WHO. Furthermore, these new rankings offer a more equitable grouping perspective, which we believe could offer health professionals and policy makers within each country helpful information that would facilitate improvement of their respective health systems. Possible extensions of this work and alternate methods for measuring efficiency are discussed and presented.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, participants will be able to

• Understand factors that affect the efficiency of national health systems.
• Recognize differences in causes of healthy life loss among certain groups of nations.
• Discuss relative rankings of national health systems and their potential implications.

Keywords: International Systems, International Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.