Metrics That Matter for Population Health Action: Workshop Summary

In times of rapid change and constrained resources, measures that are important, focused, and reliable are vital. However there is an overabundance of measures available for evaluating various aspects of population health and previous efforts to simplify existing sets to meet the needs of all decision makers have been unsuccessful. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop to explore the status and uses of measures and measurement in the work of improving population health. Participants explored existing and emerging population health metric sets and characteristics of metrics necessary for stakeholder action across multiple sectors. This publication summarizes the discussions that occurred during the workshop, and highlights speakers’ perspectives on potential needs and opportunities for identifying a set of metrics to help drive the nation’s efforts to improve population health. Chapter 2 describes the current metrics landscape, including several important milestones (events and publications). Chapter 3 presents some examples of how metrics are being used to drive improvements in population health in communities, and Chapter 4 discusses the uses of metrics to assess health equity at the population level. Chapter 5 recounts the key learnings from four rounds of World Cafe discussions, and Chapter 6 provides a reflection on the day’s discussions.