National data on coverage levels often hide important disparities among population subgroups. Inequities in health have several dimensions, including socioeconomic position, gender, place of residence, and ethnic group. Mothers and children belonging to disadvantaged groups are less likely to receive essential preventive and curative interventions, and as a result show higher morbidity and mortality.
Improving equity will be essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Countdown aims to promote universal health coverage, ensuring that disadvantaged groups are not left behind.
The Countdown to 2030 Equity Technical Working Group carries out analyses of survey datasets from the 81 priority Countdown countries, and provides breakdowns of key nutrition and reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health indicators, according to different dimensions of equity including wealth quintiles, woman’s education, woman’s age, sex of the child, urban/rural residence, and region of the country. The technical working group is also preparing analyses where feasible on ethnicity, migration, wealth deciles, disability and double disaggregation (i.e., involving two stratifiers such as the urban poor).
As a supplement to the Countdown Reports, the Equity Technical Working Group produces equity profiles containing additional information on selected maternal and child health indicators. The profiles present the Slope Index of Inequality and the Concentration Index for each health indicator, as well as a variety of charts including the coverage gap by wealth quintile, coverage levels for selected interventions along the continuum of care, and the percentage of children aged 1-4 years according to the number of key child-survival interventions received, by wealth quintile.
The equity data used in Countdown to 2030’s reports, country profiles, and equity profiles can be downloaded here.
CD2030 Equity Technical Working Group Published Research
- Fink G, Victora CG, Harttgen K, Vollmer S, Vidaletti LP, Barros AJD. Measuring socioeconomic inequalities with predicted absolute incomes rather than wealth quintiles: a comparative assessment using child stunting data from national surveys. Am J Public Health. 2017:e1-e6.
- Victora CG, Barros AJD, França GVA, Silva ICM, Carvajal-Velez L, Amouzou A. The contribution of poor and rural populations to national trends in reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health coverage: analyses of cross-sectional surveys from 64 countries. Lancet Global Health. 2017.
- Bhatia A, Ferreira LZ, Barros AJD, Victora CG. Who and where are the uncounted children? Inequalities in birth certificate coverage among children under five years in 94 countries using nationally representative household surveys. Int J Equity Health. 2017;16(148).
- Costa JC, Silva ICM, Victora CG. Gender bias in under-five mortality in low/middle-income countries. BMJ Global Health. 2017;2(2).
- Costa JC, Wehrmeister FC, Barros AJD, Victora CG. Gender bias in careseeking practices in 57 low– and middle–income countries. J Glob Health. 2017;7(1):010418.
- Wong KLM, Restrepo-Méndez MC, Barros AJD, Victora CG. Socioeconomic inequalities in skilled birth attendance and child stunting in selected low and middle income countries: Wealth quintiles or deciles? PLOS ONE. 2017;12(5):e0174823.
- França GVA, Restrepo-Méndez MC, Maia MFS, Victora CG, Barros AJD. Coverage and equity in reproductive and maternal health interventions in Brazil: impressive progress following the implementation of the Unified Health System. Int J Equity Health. 2016;15(1):149.
- Joseph G, Silva ICM, Wehrmeister FC, Barros AJD, Victora CG. Inequalities in the coverage of place of delivery and skilled birth attendance: analyses of cross-sectional surveys in 80 low and middle-income countries. Reproductive Health. 2016;13(1):1-13.
- Wehrmeister FC, Restrepo-Mendez MC, França GVA, Victora CG, Barros AJD. Summary indices for monitoring universal coverage in maternal and child health care. Bull World Health Organ. 2016;94:903-12.
- Hosseinpoor, AR, Bergen, N, Barros, AJ, Wong, KL, Boerma, T, Victora, CG. Monitoring subnational regional inequalities in health: measurement approaches and challenges. Int J Equity Health. 2016;15(1):18.
- Barros, AJD, Ewerling, F. Early childhood development: a new challenge for the SDG era. Lancet Global Health. 2016;4(12):e873-e4.
To see a list of all the publications completed under Countdown to 2015, please click here.