Healthy states progressive index: report on the ranks of states and Union Territories

The Health Index highlights the progress reached by the individual States and UTs and is an important instrument in understanding the variations and complexity of the nation’s performance in health. It highlights the areas each State should focus on to facilitate improvement in overall health outcomes. The lessons learned in the first and second rounds of Health Index will guide us in making further improvement of the Health Index in the coming years. Through the first round of implementation, stakeholders have gained valuable experience on gathering data to measure and analyse health/performance across States and UTs over time. The release of the first round of Health Index had triggered many useful discussions, including how best to measure health performance, how to strengthen the data collection system, how to identify barriers and motivate actions using data, and how to promote positive competition and learning among the States and UTs. I expect similar kind of discussions, wherein States/UTs can easily identify States that have shown marked improvement in performance from Round one. I would also think of this as a useful stock – taking tool through which progress towards SDG Goal# 3 can be tracked.