Measurement of children's health

Measuring child health has become a more pressing issue in the face of high rates of survival of childhood illnesses, often with residual chronic health conditions or impairments; the growing awareness of child behavioral and mental health morbidity; the focus on the importance of assessing therapeutic interventions and outcomes; and increased awareness of the multiple ways in which child health influences later adult health conditions. There is widespread belief that the perfect all-purpose measure can be developed and that researchers have not yet succeeded in doing so. This paper addresses three kinds of challenges to the measurement of child health that hamper the development of measures and make it likely that one size will not fit all. These include a series of fundamental underlying assumptions about health and its measurement, issues unique to assessing the health of children, and unresolved controversies that relate to the lens through which to assess child health.