Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra top NITI Aayog’s `Healthy States’ ranking

The report ranks states and union territories innovatively on their year-on-year incremental change in health outcomes, as well as their overall performance. The Round II report focuses on measuring and highlighting the overall performance and incremental improvement over a two year period (2016-17 and 2017-18) in the states and UTs.

Haryana, Rajasthan and Jharkhand have been ranked top three states in terms of annual incremental performance.

The report is an annual systematic performance tool to measure the performance of the states and UTs. It ranks states and union territories on their year on year incremental change in health outcomes, as well as, their overall performance with respect to each other. 

The ranking categorises states as larger, smaller and UTs, to ensure comparison among similar entities. The Health Index is a weighted composite index based on 23 indicators grouped into the domains of health outcomes, governance and information, and key inputs/processes.  

Each domain has been assigned weights based on its importance and has been equally distributed among indicators.

Among the larger states, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra ranks on top in terms of overall performance, while Haryana, Rajasthan and Jharkhand are the top three ranking states in terms of annual incremental performance. Haryana, Rajasthan and Jharkhand showed the maximum gains in improvement of health outcomes from base to reference year in indicators such as neonatal mortality rate (NMR), under-five mortality rate (U5MR), proportion low birth weight among new-borns, proportion of districts with functional cardiac care units (CCUs), proportion of ANCs registered within first trimester, proportion of CHCs/PHCs with quality accreditation certificates, full immunization coverage, institutional deliveries, proportion of specialist positions vacant at district hospitals and proportion of total staff (regular and contractual) with e-pay slip generated in the IT enabled human resources management information system.

Among smaller states, Mizoram ranked first followed by Manipur on overall performance, while Tripura followed by Manipur were the top ranked states in terms of annual incremental performance. Manipur registered maximum incremental progress on indicators such as full immunisation coverage, institutional deliveries, total case notification rate of tuberculosis, average occupancy of a district chief medical officer for last three years and completeness of IDSP reporting of P and L forms. 

Among UTs, Chandigarh and Dadra and Nagar Haveli were ranked on top in terms of overall performance (Chandigarh-1 and Dadra and Nagar Haveli-2) as well as annual incremental performance (Dadra and Nagar Haveli-1 and Chandigarh-2).