Measurement of Health Status

According to a now classic article by Moriyama,1 until the early 1960s, death rates provided the only relevant and sensitive measure of the health of populations. But by the mid 1960s, death rates, whether population-specific or general, no longer seemed sensitive to the changes that were taking place in health and health care in the United States. Further, Moriyama argued that death rates were unlikely to change materially except if major medical breakthroughs to increase life expectancy occurred. At about the same time, more reliance was being placed on measures of morbidity-which had been refined by the early 1960s-to assess health status. The National