Eduardo J Simoes
University of Missouri School of Medicine, USA
Title: Online priority health index: A tool for public health action
Biography
Biography: Eduardo J Simoes
Abstract
Public health funds are limited and require data-informed prioritization. We developed a priority health Index for diseases (PHI-DZ) to prioritize health issues for 27 Brazilian capital cities using 2000-2012 data from 12 indicators across 51 disease groups: number of deaths; number of hospitalizations; number of days hospitalized, number of deaths before age 70; potential years of life lost; number of deaths among those who were hospitalized, trend over time in the number of deaths; trend over time in the number of hospitalizations; the ratio of the number of deaths among persons with less than high school versus persons with high school or more education; the ratio of the number of hospitalizations among persons with less than high school versus persons with high school or more education; effectiveness of an intervention to prevent illness, injury or death; and cost of preventing and treating diseases per person. Since conducting PHI offline has limited use for the local public health practice,we further developed PHI-DZ into a web-based application for users to upload data and prioritize health issues. We integrated the use of a statistical engine into PHI-DZ application for data analysis. We identified fifteen priority diseases ranging from non-communicable diseases (e.g., heart disease), violence, motor vehicle accidents, and infant health issues to infectious-transmissible diseases. PHI is extendable to summarize data from hundreds of indicators across diseases and years for rapid prioritization of public health issues. Web-based PHI-DZ broadens its availability and convenience to facilitate local level prioritization and planning of public health funds.