The SDG Health Index comes from the article “Measuring progress from 1990 to 2017 and projecting attainment to 2030 of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals for 195 countries and territories: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017,” published in The Lancet in 2018.
“Our measurement of the health-related SDG indicators is subject to the limitations of the broader GBD 2017 study and its estimation processes; details can be found in the accompanying GBD 2017 capstone papers23–27 and in appendix 1 (part 1). Beyond these limitations, there are other important limitations that are specific to this analysis.
“First, for measurement of health worker density we used ISCO 88 codes as the base classification system instead of ISCO 08, which is a more recent system than ISCO 88 that offers greater detail and standardisation. However, few occupational data sources currently include ISCO 08 codes, and benchmarking all past surveys to ISCO 08 would have resulted in substantial informationloss. In future GBD iterations, we aim to collate more recent occupational data and to further refine health worker cadre mapping. Additionally, the UN includes density of dentist personnel in health worker density estimates, but the GBD study does not because including the four health cadres leads to counterintuitive results. Finally, the measure of health worker density can reveal only the quantity, not the quality, of available care.
“Second, continued data sparsity for many violence measures, particularly for males and non-intimate partners, results in comparatively high uncertainty for these SDG indicators. Data on the prevalence of any form of violence are also subject to a number of measurement biases. All data for these indicators are self-reported and subject to recall bias and varying interpretations of survey questions. Variation in case-definitions or survey questions used by different surveys might also lead to increased uncertainty. We did not estimate psychological violence because there was no good standard for how to consistently measure it. Cultural influences, legal barriers to reporting, and stigma can also lead to under-reporting and make the interpretation of self-reported data challenging, particularly for sensitive topics such as violence and other self-reported SDG indicators. Suicide is another indicator that might be affected by religious, cultural, and legal barriers to reporting. Accurate monitoring of violence measures requires routine, carefully implemented data collection, experienced interviewers, and thoughtful design for data intake, as well as ensuring that adequate protections and resources are available for victims of violence.
“Third, owing to overall data sparsity, many challenges remain in modelling of both temporal and age patterns for non-fatal health outcomes; for the SDGs, this challenge is particularly pronounced for hepatitis B. Our current hepatitis B vaccine coverage covariate, a key input into hepatitis B incidence modelling, is limited to infant vaccination coverage. Because the current iteration of DisMod-MR cannot accommodate age-specific covariates, the effects of vaccination in older children and young adults for countries with long-running hepatitis B vaccination programmes (eg, Taiwan [province of China]) are not well captured. A priority of future GBD iterations is to use a version of DisMod that will allow for age-specific covariates, which will benefit hepatitis B modelling. Additionally, expanding the underlying data inputs for hepatitis seroprevalence, particularly for age groups that have benefited from vaccination programmes, has the potential to substantially improve hepatitis B estimation; for instance, the Polaris Observatory has markedly increased its seroprevalence data collection efforts in recent years, and such data have yet to be incorporated into the GBD study.
“Fourth, our estimates of UHC currently only capture service coverage and do not include the second dimension of financial risk protection. The addition of financial risk protection and catastrophic health spending is a priority for future iterations of the GBD study. Ongoing review by the WHO Task Force on Metrics for GPW13 will likely yield recommendations that will inform future GBD revisions of how to measure UHC service coverage.
“Fifth, the UN’s metadata definition for vaccine coverage includes the human papillomavirus vaccine, but we do not currently include this vaccine owing to the limited number of countries with available data. Future iterations of the GBD study will aim to estimate human papillomavirus vaccine coverage.
“Sixth, conflicts and refugee populations might affect SDG indicator trends in ways not well captured by our data. Although these factors introduce additional uncertainty to our estimates, these populations cannot be ignored, and GBD strives to make the best estimates based on the available data.”
Source: GBD 2017 SDG Collaborators. “Measuring progress from 1990 to 2017 and projecting attainment to 2030 of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals for 195 countries and territories: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017.” Lancet (London, England) vol. 392,10159 (2018): 2091-2138. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32281-5
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World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other nations.
Page last updated March 29, 2025 by Doug McVay, Editor.