WHO and Global Health Monitoring: The Way Forward

Global, regional, and country statistics on population and health indicators are important for assessing development and health progress and for guiding resource allocation, but data are often lacking, especially in lowand middle-income countries. To fill the gaps, statistical modeling is frequently used to produce comparable health statistics across countries that can be combined to produce regional and global statistics. Modeling brings together data from different sources and uses a range of statistical techniques to correct for biases, impute values where data are lacking, and predict current values for key health indicators. Estimation work, whether it be conducted under the aegis of an agency like the World Health Organization (WHO) or in an academic institution, should meet agreed standards of transparency, scientific rigour, and accessibility. Building upon WHO-issued internal guidelines for producing global, regional, and country estimates, four essential criteria can be identified [1,2]. For each we offer the WHO perspective on current status and scope for improvement in work on estimates for health indicators.