Multidimensional Health Disparity: Measurement and Inference

• Activity Number: 295
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 5, 2014 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Health Policy Statistics Section
• Author(s): Makram Talih*+
• Companies: NCHS
• Keywords: health inequality ; composite indicator ; rank-robustness ; survey data ; multidimensional index ; weights

Abstract

Inequalities in health and health outcomes are best analyzed within a conceptual framework that accounts for their multidimensional nature. Yet, many summary measures of health disparity remain one-dimensional in scope, focusing on one population characteristic at a time (such as race and ethnicity, educational attainment, or geographic location), and specific methods and measures reflect specific value judgments and policy priorities. In this presentation, I will investigate how the lessons learned from the development of multidimensional indices of wellbeing can help guide the development of multidimensional health disparity measures, in particular with regards to the selection of relative weights for the different dimension, rank-robustness of between-group comparisons, and statistical inference from complex health survey data.