Susanne Stoiber
Executive Officer, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences

• Provided an overview of progress to date on leading health indicators

• Challenged panelists and participants to consider whether a small set of leading health indicators can be identified which reflect progress towards the health goals of the Nation.

Robert B. Wallace, MD, MSc
Director, Cancer Center, University of Iowa

• Leading health indicators need to be few enough in number to be memorable while galvanizing the public and media.

• HHS needs to carefully consider how to address coverage of small areas, demographic and geographic subgroups, and specificity of data.

• Decisions need to be made about inclusion of subjective measures, social measures, and composite measures.

Linda Bresolin, PhD
Director, Office of Minority and Women’s Health, American Medical Association

• Lessons can be learned from the AMA’s National Health Index project, which was similar in its purpose to the current HHS effort.

• AMA chose to measure incidence of disease processes and behaviors positively and negatively related to health. The topics include tobacco use, alcohol/drug abuse, mental health, fitness, sexual health, chronic illness, disability, participation in prevention, acute illness.

• The methodology is challenging, but the results are very useful for program planning and assessment.

Keith Erikson, MA
Director, Linn County Health Department, Iowa

• To create a successful set of leading health indicators, HHS should address concerns such as validation, linked data bases, small area analyses, benchmarking, best practices and real time data.

• Look to existing data projects such as CDC’s Health Status Indicators, the Community Health Status Indicators project (being carried out through Public Health Foundation, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and National Association of County and City Health Officials with funding from HRSA), and the Health Care Forum’s outcome tool kit.

• Data needs to be timely.

• Indicators need to be actionable at the local level.

• Indicators should be a blend of individual and community level measures.

Chicago Transcripts and Summaries