Indigenous Health Indicators Tool

Type
Health
Organization
U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit
Description

The Indigenous Health Indicators (IHIs) are meant to provide a clear and broadly understandable depiction of what it means to be healthy for many indigenous communities, as well as a method for evaluating the status of health and well-being. The IHIs expand the often narrow scope of many current health regulations and policies that views risks and impacts as objective measures of physiological morbidity or mortality outcomes, but does not otherwise connect them to ecosystem health or social and cultural beliefs and values integral to indigenous definitions of health. By constructing a more complex, narrative set of indicators beyond the physiological for indigenous communities, a more accurate picture of health status is gained with which to better evaluate and manage public environmental health risks and impacts.

Geography