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WHO Reference Group on Health Statistics (RGHS)
Advising and supporting WHO in the organization’s efforts to assist Member States to achieve maximal gains in population health, through policies informed by statistics, analytics and evidence.
Objectives
To provide technical and strategic advice to WHO to ensure that WHO’s practices in data processing and synthesis, and in producing and using population-health related statistics, are evidence-based.
Giving advice to WHO on data principles and best practices to guide comparable population health statistics at the global, regional, and country levels.
Functioning as a general global platform to discuss the challenges and progress in reporting on the health-related SDGs with a focus on the methodological and data issues, including data processing.
Advising WHO on engaging in different interagency processes involving global health statistics.
Providing expert advice to WHO about the interpretation and use of forecasting studies for policy dialogue, including the appropriateness of forecasting methods.
To advise WHO on strengthening collaboration with external research groups in advancing the methodological agenda for population-health estimates
Advising WHO on a broad range of population-health related statistics with a focus on cost-effective approaches to identifying and resolving key data gaps and data quality issues.
Advise WHO on active engagement for strengthening the scientific basis for global health estimates and related work, such as improving methods and skills for measuring patterns of cause-specific burdens of diseases, risk factors and injuries, and to collaborate wherever possible in the production of those estimates.
Advise WHO on facilitating collaboration and scientific exchange between disease-specific expert groups within WHO and work on cause-specific mortality and morbidity of diseases and injuries, with partners;
Advise WHO on convening expert task forces on specialized topics that require in-depth technical work to advance the methodological agenda.
To guide WHO on strengthening data and information systems for health:
- Providing strategic and scientific advice to WHO to support the strengthening of country data and information systems for health, including data generation and critical analyses of data quality.
Promote GATHER compliance in producing population-health related statistics
- Offering recommendations to WHO on standards for official statistics, including adherence to the GATHER Guidelines, and on data principles underlying the use or endorsement of external analyses and estimates.