A nationally representative survey on healthy ageing provides comprehensive data on the health status, needs, and challenges of older persons. It assesses intrinsic capacity, chronic diseases, functional abilities, lifestyle factors, and healthcare utilization. This data is vital for policymakers, healthcare providers, and public health professionals to evaluate health interventions, identify emerging issues, allocate resources efficiently, and promote healthy ageing. These surveys monitor progress over time to ensure evidence-based and equitable health outcomes for older people.
Definition:
A nationally representative cross-sectional survey on healthy ageing is a population-based survey conducted across an entire country or region. It aims to gather comprehensive data from a diverse sample of the population that reflects the nation's demographic, social, and geographic characteristics. These surveys assess various dimensions of ageing among older individuals, including their intrinsic capacity, functional abilities, prevalence of chronic diseases, lifestyle factors, environmental barriers affecting healthy ageing, healthcare utilization patterns, coverage of care services (including long-term care), and overall well-being.
This data can help estimate the prevalence of different health characteristics, assess peoples’ capacities and abilities, care needs, and burden of specific diseases or conditions, and also help document inequalities by age, sex, place of residence or other socio-demographic characteristics. The indicator represents countries with nationally representative, publicly accessible, cross-sectional or repeated cross-sectional data on Healthy Ageing collected in 2010 or more recently.
Disaggregation:
WHO Region and Income Group
Method of measurement
Calculating this indicator requires country-reported data on national policies, action plans, strategies, or programmes. At the global level, these data are periodically collected through the Decade Process Evaluation Survey.
Method of estimation:
The percentage of countries in the region that responded "Yes", "No" or "Not Reported".
While having a nationally representative survey is valuable, it does not ensure that the data collected is comprehensive, up-to-date, or adequately utilized to inform policies and programs. The indicator also does not evaluate the methodological rigor of these surveys, such as sample size, data collection techniques, or the relevance of the questions asked. Additionally, it does not account for how well the survey results are integrated into decision-making processes or how effectively they address the diverse needs of the ageing population. Variations in survey design and implementation across countries further complicate comparisons.
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