In June 2019 a team led by Mat White from the European Centre for Environment and Human Health (ECEHH), University of Exeter Medical School, were successful in their bid to develop a ‘Demystifying Health Metrics’ publication for the Valuing Nature Programme Coordination Team.
To read this report click here
This report is the fourth in the Demystifying Series, and aims to unpack quantitative measures of health & wellbeing to demonstrate the value of the natural environment for human health & wellbeing for the natural capital community. It used the first , as a jump off point. The first Demystifying report on health had clearly identified health metrics as key to measuring health and wellbeing, but stopped short of examining these in any depth. However, feedback from the community showed that more understanding was needed around health metrics and hence, this report was commissioned.
The development of the document was led by the team based at ECEHH, however included the contribution of 25 experts in the field. It provides a synthesis and integration of knowledge and understanding from multiple disciplinary perspectives including policy, practice and academic sectors. By providing a review of the relevant health metrics (see below for additional resources), examining why one would want to use health metrics, providing basic guidance on how to identify the best metrics for a particular case, as well as on data collection, analysis and communciation of results, the document goes above and beyond just identifying what health metrics are, and by providing some archetypal examples showing how metrics can be applied, a gloassary of terms, and recommended next steps in this area of thinking, it is hoped that this report will provide the answers that the community has been awaiting.
Additional Resources:
Health metric extraction table* for metrics that the authors were able to establish had already been used in a nature-based context; and
Health metric extraction table * for metrics that the authors were unable to find evidence of having been used (or potentially usable) in a nature-based context
This was trues at the time the report was written. These lists are not exhaustive, and are a work in progress but hopefully are still a good resource for the natural capital community.
Health metrics reference list * is simply a list of all the papers mentioned in the metric extraction tables to enable you to follow up a particular metric or study if you wished.
For further information, please contact: Demystifying@valuing-nature.net
*The files are password protected and can only be opened as read only files to ensure the integrity of the information