TY - JOUR
T1 - National health examination surveys; a source of critical data
AU - Margozzini, Paula
AU - Tolonen, Hanna
AU - Bernabe-Ortiz, Antonio
AU - Cuschieri, Sarah
AU - Donfrancesco, Chiara
AU - Palmieri, Luigi
AU - Sanchez-Romero, Luz Maria
AU - Mindell, Jennifer S.
AU - Oyebode, Oyinlola
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The authors.
PY - 2024/8/1
Y1 - 2024/8/1
N2 - The aim of this paper is to contribute technical arguments to the debate about the importance of health examination surveys and their continued use during the post-pandemic health financing crisis, and in the context of a technological innovation boom that offers new ways of collecting and analysing individual health data (e.g. artificial intelligence). Technical considerations demonstrate that health examination surveys make an irreplaceable contribution to the local availability of primary health data that can be used in a range of further studies (e.g. normative, burden-of-disease, care cascade, cost and policy impact studies) essential for informing several phases of the health planning cycle (e.g. surveillance, prioritization, resource mobilization and policy development). Examples of the use of health examination survey data in the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region (i.e. Finland, Italy, Malta and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and the WHO Region of the Americas (i.e. Chile, Mexico, Peru and the United States of America) are presented, and reasons why health provider-led data cannot replace health examination survey data are discussed (e.g. underestimation of morbidity and susceptibility to bias). In addition, the importance of having nationally representative random samples of the general population is highlighted and we argue that health examination surveys make a critical contribution to external quality control for a country’s health system by increasing the transparency and accountability of health spending. Finally, we consider future technological advances that can improve survey fieldwork and suggest ways of ensuring health examination surveys are sustainable in low-resource settings.
AB - The aim of this paper is to contribute technical arguments to the debate about the importance of health examination surveys and their continued use during the post-pandemic health financing crisis, and in the context of a technological innovation boom that offers new ways of collecting and analysing individual health data (e.g. artificial intelligence). Technical considerations demonstrate that health examination surveys make an irreplaceable contribution to the local availability of primary health data that can be used in a range of further studies (e.g. normative, burden-of-disease, care cascade, cost and policy impact studies) essential for informing several phases of the health planning cycle (e.g. surveillance, prioritization, resource mobilization and policy development). Examples of the use of health examination survey data in the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region (i.e. Finland, Italy, Malta and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and the WHO Region of the Americas (i.e. Chile, Mexico, Peru and the United States of America) are presented, and reasons why health provider-led data cannot replace health examination survey data are discussed (e.g. underestimation of morbidity and susceptibility to bias). In addition, the importance of having nationally representative random samples of the general population is highlighted and we argue that health examination surveys make a critical contribution to external quality control for a country’s health system by increasing the transparency and accountability of health spending. Finally, we consider future technological advances that can improve survey fieldwork and suggest ways of ensuring health examination surveys are sustainable in low-resource settings.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85199936673&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.2471/BLT.24.291783
DO - 10.2471/BLT.24.291783
M3 - Artículo
C2 - 39070597
AN - SCOPUS:85199936673
SN - 0042-9686
VL - 102
SP - 588
EP - 599
JO - Bulletin of the World Health Organization
JF - Bulletin of the World Health Organization
IS - 8
ER -