The World Health Organization has launched the Health Inequality Data Repository, which contains almost 11 million data points from 59 datasets and 15 data sources. The repository provides metrics for over 2,000 population health indicators that can be broken down using 22 dimensions of inequality, such as geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic determinants of health. While the data is limited, it has already highlighted disparities in national COVID-19 responses. WHO is urging countries to adopt routine health inequality monitoring and expand data collection to improve health equity.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently launched its Health Inequality Data Repository (HIDR), which is the largest collection of data on population health and inequalities to date. The HIDR has been developed to help track health disparities across populations and improve outcomes. It comprises almost 11 million data points sourced from 59 datasets and 15 data sources, according to the press release.
The HIDR provides information regarding more than 2,000 population health indicators, which are further broken down using 22 dimensions of inequality, such as geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic determinants of health. The repository contains data related to various health issues such as COVID-19, tuberculosis, malaria, HIV, reproductive, maternal, and child health, immunization, nutrition, healthcare, non-communicable diseases, environmental health, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The WHO has developed the HIDR to identify and address important health inequality patterns. It aims to direct services toward people who require them the most and to advance health equity while improving lives. The HIDR is intended to be a one-stop-shop for data on health inequality, helping to move beyond only counting births and deaths to disaggregating health data according to sex, age, education, region, and more.
The WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, MSc, Ph.D., stated that “If we are truly committed to leaving no one behind, we must figure out who is being missed.” Therefore, the HIDR has been developed to support health equity by tracking health inequalities among populations over time. The HIDR breaks down data according to group characteristics, such as ethnicity or education level.
Nevertheless, since the HIDR only includes publicly accessible disaggregated data, its data is constrained. Hence, many health indicators inside the repository do not presently have access to disaggregated data. When data are available, they are frequently divided by sex, age, and region, which limits the inferences that can be drawn regarding certain inequality tendencies.
Despite the limitations, HIDR’s data has already revealed some disparities. The data indicate significant inequalities in national COVID-19 responses. According to the HIDR, COVID-19 vaccination coverage among the most educated populations was at least 15 percentage points higher than among the least educated populations in more than a third of the 90 countries with data in the HIDR.
By releasing the HIDR, the WHO is urging countries to adopt routine health inequality monitoring, make disaggregated population health and health inequality data publicly available, expand data collection, and increase capacity for analysis and reporting. The analyses should be conducted at the global, national, and subnational levels, with health inequality monitoring incorporated into global and national indicators and targets. WHO will collaborate with countries and other stakeholders to expand the HIDR each year as part of these efforts.
