Provincial Health Council Completes Health Status Indicator Development

PROVINCIAL HEALTH COUNCIL--Provincial Health Council Completes Health Status Indicator Development

The Provincial Health Council announced today, Feb. 9, that it has completed work on the development of a series of measures that will help monitor the health of Nova Scotians.

The council approved its final report and presented a copy of the summary report to Health Minister Angus MacIsaac late last week.

During a two-year process involving experts and community representatives from across the province, the council developed a series of 12 reports and a database of 150 indicators of the health status of Nova Scotians.

The data collected for each of the indicators will be used to report to Nova Scotians about their health and will allow comparisons of the health of Nova Scotians to the health of residents in other provinces and other countries. The database will be updated over time, allowing tracking of changes in the health status of Nova Scotians.

It is one of the largest databases of health status indicators in Canada and is the only one of its size based on the social determinants of health.

The council has received interest in the database, and the approach used to develop the indicators, from health researchers from across the country and from as far away as the United Kingdom and Guatemala.

The council used the 12 social determinants of health set out by Health Canada as a framework to develop the 150 measures of the health of Nova Scotians.

"When the Provincial Health Council held public consultations in 2000, council members heard that people were interested in the broader forces that affect the health of our population," said Catherine Randall, chair of the Provincial Health Council. "Using the social determinants of health as a framework allowed us to move beyond only looking at the health-care services available as a measure of health, to looking at the broader forces that affect our health such as personal health practices, the social environment, working conditions, gender, and culture, to name a few."

The council will be using the indicator work and the collected data to develop five more reports that advise Nova Scotians about their health. A report will be released in each of the next four years looking at the health status of one age group: children and adolescents, young adults, mature adults, and seniors. In the fifth year of the process, a report will be released on health issues that are of concern to all age groups. The cycle of reports will then be repeated.

Council members hope these reports will be used by organizations

• such as community health boards, school boards, and community groups -- to develop action plans to bring about positive changes in the health of local residents.

Over the next few weeks the council will hold a series of focus groups in communities across the province to gather feedback on a draft of the first report, which looks at the health status of children and adolescents. The final version of that report is expected to be released in the spring.

Copies of the 12 social determinants of health indicator reports, and more information about the indicator development and reporting processes, are available on the council's website at www.healthcouncil.ns.ca or by calling the council office at 1- 800-854-0815.