NITI Aayog as the premier policy ‘Think Tank’ of the Government of India, believes in the mantra ‘what gets measured gets done. As a part of cooperative & competitive federalism, NITI Aayog and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) work to continuously nudge states/UTs towards improvements in health outcomes.

In 2017 the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and the World Bank initiated an annual Health Index for tracking Overall Performance and Incremental Performance on health across all states and Union Territories (UTs). The objective of the Annual Health Index is to track progress on health outcomes and health systems performance, develop a healthy competition and encourage cross-learning among states and UTs. Health Index Scores and rankings for states and UTs are generated to assess incremental performance (year-to-year progress) and overall performance (current performance). The exercise is expected to help drive state/UT's efforts towards the achievement of health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including those related to Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and other health outcomes.

Health Index is a weighted composite score incorporating 24 indicators covering key aspects of health performance. The domains covered in the report are Health Outcomes, Governance and Information, and Key Inputs and Processes.

These Health Index Reports aims to nudge the States/UTs towards building robust health systems and improving service delivery. The importance of this annual tool is reemphasized by MOHFW’s s decision to link this Health Index to incentives under National Health Mission. This Report has tried to shift the focus from budget spending, inputs, and outputs to outcomes. 

A robust, acceptable mechanism is used for measuring the performance- indicators are agreed, data is collected online through a portal maintained by NITI, which is then validated through an independent validation agency selected through a transparent bidding process, the validated data sheets are shared with the states for verification, after which data is finalized and used for analysis and report writing.

The Health Index is a useful tool to measure and compare the overall performance and incremental Performance across states/UTs over time and is an important instrument in understanding the variations in performance across various parameters including health outcomes, governance, and data integrity, and key inputs and processes.  It has strengthened the culture of use of data at the state/UT level to monitor performance and is contributing to the agenda of improving the availability, quality, and timeliness of data in most states/UT. Through this report, the annual performance of the state/UT gets monitored at the highest level of the government. The report for the Financial Year 2019-20 will be released on 27^th of December 2021 at 12.00 pm.

Health Index ranks state health performance to drive improvements, data validation, and link scores to incentive allocation. The Health Index is an outcomes-focused composite ranking aggregating 24 indicators across Health Outcomes, Governance and Information, and Key Inputs and Processes to produce overall and incremental state/UT scores; data are collected via a NITI portal, validated by an independently selected agency, verified by states, and finalised for analysis. The Index aims to track progress, promote competitive federalism and cross-learning, support SDG and UHC objectives, and is linked to National Health Mission incentives to shift focus from inputs to outcomes.