In news- NITI Aayog, recently released the fourth edition of the State Health Index for 2019–20.
About the index-
- The report, titled “Healthy States, Progressive India”, ranks states and Union Territories on their year-on-year incremental performance in health outcomes as well as their overall status.
- The index has been compiled and published since 2017.
- The objective of the Index is to track progress on health outcomes and health systems performance, develop a healthy competition and encourage cross-learning among states and UTs.
- It aims to nudge states/UTs towards building robust health systems and improving service delivery.
- Round IV of the report focuses on measuring and highlighting the overall performance and incremental improvement of states and UTs over the period 2018–19 to 2019–20.
- It was developed by NITI Aayog, with technical assistance from the World Bank, and in close consultation with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).
- It is a weighted composite index based on 24 indicators grouped under the domains of ‘Health Outcomes’, ‘Governance and Information’, and ‘Key Inputs/Processes’.
- Each domain has been assigned weights based on its importance with higher scores for outcome indicators.
- 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 (Rank 19) in Overall Performance, however, it ranked at the top in terms of Incremental Performance by registering the highest incremental change from the Base Year (2018-19) to Reference Year (2019-20).
- On the other hand, Kerala and Tamil Nadu were top two performers in terms of Overall Performance with the highest Reference Year (2019-20) Index Scores but ranked twelfth and eight respectively in terms of Incremental Performance.
- Telangana performed well both in terms of Overall Performance as well as Incremental Performance and secured the third position in both instances.
- For the fourth consecutive round Kerala emerged as the best performer in terms of Overall Performance.
- Among the Smaller States, Mizoram emerged as the best performer in Overall Performance as well as Incremental Performance while among UTs, Delhi and Jammu & Kashmir ranked among the bottom UTs in terms of Overall Performance but emerged as the leading performer in terms Incremental Performance.