Healthy States, Progressive India: NITI Aayog Releases Fourth Edition of State Health Index

What is the News?

NITI Aayog has released the fourth edition of the State Health Index for 2019–20 with the title “Healthy States, Progressive India”.

What is the State Health Index?

Developed by: NITI Aayog in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and the World Bank since 2017.

Objective: To track progress on health outcomes and health systems performance, develop healthy competition and encourage cross-learning among states and UTs.  

Indicators: The index is a weighted composite score incorporating 24 indicators covering key aspects of health performance. The indicators are categorised into three domains: 

– Health Outcomes: It includes parameters such as neonatal mortality rate, under-5 mortality rate, the sex ratio at birth.

– Governance and Information: It includes parameters such as institutional deliveries, average occupancy of senior officers in key posts earmarked for health.

– Key Inputs/Processes: It consists of the proportion of shortfall in health care providers to what is recommended, functional medical facilities, birth and death registration and tuberculosis treatment success rate.

Categorization: The states are classified into three categories (Larger States, Smaller States and UTs). In this round, all the states and UTs participated except West Bengal, and the UT of Ladakh was not included due to the non-availability of data.

Base Year: The index has been calculated as a weighted average of all the indicators in each state and union territory for a base year(2018-19) and a reference year (2019-20). 

Source of Data: The index uses existing data sources such as the Sample Registration System, Civil Registration System and Health Management Information Systems. However, the index does not incorporate the impact of Covid-19.

Significance of this index: The index will help drive state/UT’s efforts towards achievement of health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including those related to Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and other health outcomes.

What are the key findings of the index?

Among the larger states, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana emerged among the best three performers in terms of overall performance. 

Uttar Pradesh ranked at the bottom in Overall Performance. However, it ranked at the top in terms of Incremental Performance by registering the highest incremental change from the Base Year. 

Among the Smaller States, Mizoram emerged as the best performer in Overall Performance as well as Incremental Performance.

Among UTs, Delhi followed by Jammu and Kashmir showed the best incremental performance.

Moreover, the report has found that better performing States such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu performed comparatively better on the health outcomes domain but performed badly on key inputs and processes.

Source: This post is based on the following articles:

– ‘NITI Aayog Releases Fourth Edition of State Health Index’ published in PIB on 28th Dec 2021.

–  ‘Kerala tops NITI’s health rankings, UP ranks worst’ published in Livemint on 28th Dec 2021.

– ‘Kerala tops NITI Aayog Health Index again’ published in The Hindu on 28th Dec 2021.