The World Health Organization (WHO) recently released a groundbreaking study that sheds light on global health inequalities. This collection of data is the largest of its kind, covering nearly 87% of the world’s population across 204 countries and territories. The report reveals startling disparities in access to healthcare and demonstrates how social and economic barriers play significant roles in determining health outcomes. In this article, we explore the key findings of the WHO’s data collection and what this means for global health policy.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently launched the Health Inequality Data Repository, a global collection of publicly available disaggregated data and evidence on population health and its determinants. This repository allows for tracking health inequalities across different population groups and over time. The data can be broken down according to various group characteristics such as education level, ethnicity, and more.
This repository represents a significant step forward in understanding health inequalities and their determinants. It includes nearly 11 million data points and consists of 59 datasets from over 15 sources. These datasets provide measurements of over 2000 indicators and can be broken down according to 22 dimensions of inequality, including demographic, socioeconomic, and geographical factors. The topics covered by the repository include the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), COVID-19, reproductive, maternal and child health, immunization, HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, nutrition, health care, non-communicable diseases and environmental health.
Through the data available in the repository, we can see that, in just a decade, the rich-poor gap in health service coverage among women, newborns and children in low- and middle-income countries has nearly halved. These data also reveal that, in these countries, eliminating wealth-related inequality in under-five mortality could help save the lives of 1.8 million children.
Disaggregated data are still not available for many health indicators, and where they are available, they are most frequently broken down only by sex and, to a lesser extent, by age and place of residence. Only 170 of the 320 indicators in WHO’s gateway for health-related statistics, the Global Health Observatory, are disaggregated. However, even with this limited data, the available disaggregated data reveal important inequality patterns. For example, in high-income countries, hypertension is more common among men than women, and obesity rates are similar among men and women. In low-income countries, hypertension rates are similar among women and men, but obesity rates are higher among women than men.
The repository also reveals inequalities in national COVID-19 responses. In 2021, in more than a third of the 90 countries with data, COVID-19 vaccination coverage among the most educated was at least 15 percentage points higher than among the least educated.
The HIDR is being released with a call to countries to adopt routine health inequality monitoring, make disaggregated data publicly available, expand data collection, and increase capacity for analysis and reporting. Inequality analyses should be conducted regularly at the global, national, and subnational levels, with health inequality monitoring integrated into global and national goals, indicators, and targets, and health performance assessments. WHO is committed to working with countries and partners to update and expand this resource annually.
Overall, this Health Inequality Data Repository will be useful for policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders in the field of public health. It will help us move beyond only counting births and deaths to disaggregating health data according to sex, age, education, region, and more. The ability to direct services to those who need them the most is vital to advancing health equity and improving lives.
In conclusion, the release of the WHO’s largest global collection of health inequality data is a timely reminder of the urgent need to address health disparities around the globe. With this comprehensive and powerful dataset at hand, there is no excuse for policymakers and stakeholders to turn a blind eye to the inequities that exist in healthcare access and outcomes. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that everyone, regardless of their background or socio-economic status, has access to quality healthcare and can live their best life. Let us use this data to inform policy, drive change and make a tangible difference in the lives of millions.
