Round table: Measuring values: enhancing how WHO monitors and reports on health and well-being
Authors:   Organised by: WHO EURO Chair persons: Nick Fahy - UK
Published: November 2019

Many concepts that are key to public health policy-making are conceptual and often values-based. How such concepts can be implemented by Member States, and how the effectiveness of this implementation can be measured and reported, remains an critical challenge that all major monitoring frameworks are faced with, from Health 2020 (WHO’s European policy framework for health and well-being), to the Sustainable Development Goals for Agenda 2030.

In 2016, WHO established a project to interrogate how four key values-based public health concepts can be better measured and reported on, to increase the accountability of Member States towards these concepts. Based on the priority areas of Health 2020, the concepts which were chosen are: resilience;empowerment;life-course approach; andwhole of society approach.

Four Health Evidence Network (HEN) synthesis reports were commissioned from leading experts and have now been published, synthesizing the best available evidence and grey literature on these concepts, and proposing a variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches to measuring them.

The workshop will be organized as round table workshop. It will bring together the authors of all four reports to provide an overarching thematic discussion on how to enhance the monitoring and reporting of values-based public health concepts. In addition, it will also present an opportunity to discuss the findings of the reports, in particular how qualitative evidence can be deployed to make up for the shortcomings of quantitative indicators. The role of culture in informing these values-based concepts will also be discussed.

The session will be chaired by Nick Fahy, who will set the scene and provide some background to the WHO Europe project on enhancing monitoring and reporting. Jane South will then give overview of the HEN synthesis report on measuring resilience, followed Glenn Laverack, who will talk about the HEN report on measuring empowerment. Mark Hanson and Scott Greer will review their respective HEN reports on measuring the life-course approach and whole-of-society approach implementation. Each speaker will be asked to illustrate their presentation with a case study which demonstrates how qualitative evidence can enhance the monitoring and/or reporting of the various concepts.

During the discussion, a number of key questions will be discussed by the panel with input from the audience. How can actionable measurement strategies be derived from existing research regarding values based concepts?How can meaningful, country-level reporting mechanisms be expanded to include quantitative and qualitative health information and indicators?What is the role of cultural contexts in mediating these (and other) values-based concepts?

Key messages

Many key public health concepts are inherently values-based. However, this is often not acknowledged, making it challenging to monitor and report on them. Qualitative evidence can be key to designing more effective ways to measure the implementation of values-based public health concepts.

Jane South

Contact: J.South@leedsbeckett.ac.uk

Glenn Laverack

Contact: grlavera@hotmail.com

Mark Hanson

Contact: M.Hanson@soton.ac.uk

Scott Greer

Contact: slgreer@umich.edu