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A comparison of three health status indicators.

Interest in health status indicators has produced measures of widely varying applicability. We were interested in the use of such indices to establish mean recovery curves for groups of similar patients undergoing acute hospital treatment. A longitudinal study relating resource usage to these recovery curves had been intended but there were difficulties in finding suitable indicators. Firstly, two published indicators relying on patient interviews were tested for consistency. Poor correlations were found among those scorers unfamiliar with the patients and it seems unlikely that these indicators could be used in a routine system. Different parts of the indices presented difficulties to the different professions involved in scoring, and a multidisciplinary approach may be needed in assessing full health. The indicators tested included no assessment of prognosis. Those parts of the indices which had produced significant correlations were retained in subsequent work and were supplemented by further measures designed to overcome the earlier difficulties. A new trial of this indicator was undertaken where staff, familiar with the patients, scored data recorded by the Problem Oriented Medical Record system. This produced improved correlations but some problems remain.

Disability Evaluation

Consensus set of health status indicators for the general assessment of community health status--United States.

Healthy People 2000 establishes a framework for the development of an explicit prevention program for the nation (1); the Year 2000 Health Objectives Planning Act* provides legislative support for such a program. To address both the requirements of that act and Objective 22.1 of Healthy People 2000, a consensus set of 18 health status indicators has been developed to assist communities in assessing their general health status and in focusing local, state, and national efforts in tracking the year 2000 objectives. Priority in selecting the indicators was given to measures for which data are readily available and that are commonly used in public health.

Aged

Health status indices and access to medical care.

This paper examines the uses of some health status indices in measuring equity of access to medical care. Empirical examples are provided using data from national surveys of the U.S. population conducted from 1964 through 1976. A simple indicator, mean number of physician visits, suggests that between 1963 and 1976 the poor improved their position relative to the rest of the population and, indeed, currently enjoy the highest level of access. However, a second measure, the use-disability ratio indicates that the poor may still receive less care relative to their need. A third measure, the symptoms-response ratio suggests how norms of appropriate behavior might be incorporated into an access measure.

Disability Evaluation

[The effect of Bentazone, a Czechoslovak developmental herbicide, on health status indicators in sheep during subchronic poisoning].

A three-month feeding trial was conducted with sheep of the Slovak Merino breed (13-14 months of age, males and females) as a part of the obligatory toxicological tests of the Czechoslovak developmental herbicide bentazone (Research Institute for Chemical Technology, Bratislava). Partial results are shown describing the action of this herbicide on the overall health of sheep with respect to weight gains, trias values and intrauterine foetus development. The sheep of the first experimental group were fed bentazone as an additive to molasses feed M at a daily rate of 195 mg/kg lwt. (1/10 from LD50), and the sheep of the second group were fed a rate of 97.5 mg/kg lwt. (1/20 from LD50). No symptoms of the toxic effects of bentazone were observed in the course of the experiment. There were no differences between the experimental and test animals in the dynamics of pulse value changes (Fig. 1), breathing value changes (Fig. 2) and body temperature value changes (Fig. 3) from the beginning till the end of the trial. A slight increase in the pulse and breathing values above the upper reference value observed in the experimental groups in the last two to three weeks of the trial cannot be associated with the bentazone action. This increase reflects the physiological condition of the animals in the given conditions because the identical changes were also found in the control group. We assume that the changes were evoked by the elevated temperature of the external environment due to the fact that the sheep were not sheared.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Animals

The President's NHI proposal: solution or problem?

Are the Carter administration's NHI principles appropriate for resolving health problems in the United States? An examination of the applicability of these principles to the problems--categorized in terms of health status indicators, health care resources, and consumer satisfaction--concludes that evidence in these areas does not indicate a need for NHI. Recommendations for establishing appropriate health care proposals follow.

Consumer Behavior

Indicators of health status in adolescence.

The study reported here is based on data obtained in 1968-1970 from a representative community sample of urban black youths in the United States aged 12-17 years, inclusive. Analysis is directed at conceptual and methodological issues in measureing health status. It suggests the need for greater attention to subjective self-evaluated self-reported components of health status, specified here as "ontological" health. This is related to health and illness behavior generally, to utilization of health services more particularly. The case is made for a multiple-indicator approach to measuring health status as being more consistent with the multidimensional phenomenon to which it refers. The method used in this study for deriving a composite health status index from four component self-reported indicators is described. The distribution of the sample on this composite was used to identify self-reported health conditions that warrant attention from providers of adolescent health services. Since subjective evaluations influence experienced severity of health problems, the health status composite index was applied in this study as a means of discriminating differntial seriousness in self-reported health problems. Finally, some differences between indications of "ontological" health and "medical" health also are analyzed for commonalities and differences between them.

Adolescent

Sociocultural barriers to medical care among Mexican Americans in Texas: a summary report of research conducted by the Southwest Medical Sociology Ad Hoc Committee.

This paper summarizes research findings from members of the Southwest Medical Sociology Ad Hoc Committee concerning sociocultural barriers to medical care among Mexican Americans in Texas. Committee members individually, or in two-person groups, studied a number of factors concerning Mexican-American medical care in Texas such as: 1) mortality, morbidity, and other health status indicators; 2) health manpower and educational needs; 3) political factors impeding economical health care; 4) alienation, familism, and their relationship to utilization of the health services; 5) language and communication barriers; and 6) folk medicine. Findings include documentation that structural alienation of Mexican-Americans from mainstream Anglo-American middle-class society is carried over into their relation with utilization of the health care delivery system; that their emphasis on familism works alternatively to encourage and discourage their seeking access to health care; the language differences serve to perpetuate certain cultural differences that are inimical to health care delivery; and that curanderismo can be seen as complementing other types of health care. The report concludes with a number of recommendations for accomplishing cultural integration that will lead to better care for this segment of the health population.

Communication