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Patterns of disease among children: A simple and versatile measure of child health in communities
Author(s) -
DUGDALE AE
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
journal of paediatrics and child health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.631
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1440-1754
pISSN - 1034-4810
DOI - 10.1111/j.1440-1754.1996.tb00938.x
Subject(s) - medicine , medical diagnosis , disease , child health , pediatrics , community health , environmental health , demography , public health , pathology , sociology
Objective : To derive an indicator of community child health that is simple, stable, cost‐effective and suitable for small communities. Methodology : Discharge diagnoses of children have been tabulated for hospitals in Australia and other countries and from an Aboriginal community, for up to 40 years. The differences in ratios between main diagnostic groups relate to the child health status in the community. Results : As we pass from ‘developing’ to ‘developed’ conditions, the proportion of different diagnoses changes with a relative decrease in gastroenteritis and a relative increase in respiratory and other diseases. These changes parallel changes in infant mortality rates and child growth that are independent indicators of community child health. Conclusions : The ratios of diagnoses of hospital discharges, the ‘disease pyramid’ is a reliable, valid and cost‐effective way of measuring child health in a community while avoiding many of the uncertainties of conventional disease‐specific and age‐specific discharge rate statistics.