Handbook On Training In Civil Registration And Vital Statistics Systems

This handbook is designed for use in developing training courses in civil registration and vital statistics systems. Target groups may include national officials from ongoing civil registration and vital statistics systems or university students in such programmes as statistics, demography and social sciences, medicine and public health. The main part of the handbook consists of 23 training modules that can be presented in approximately one hour each. Within each modules is: a contents summary; source readings; a list of key points; discussion points and suggested exercises; review questions.

The publication is an international standard on the design and operation of an efficient and accurate vital statistics system at national level. It provides guidelines on collection, compiling and disseminating vital statistics. More specifically it contains (a) basic principles for a vital statistics system; (b) uses of vital statistics and civil registration records; (c) topics to be covered in a vital statistics system; (d) sources of vital statistics and how they function; (e) quality assurance in the vital statistics system and (f) strategies in improving civil registration and vital statistics systems in countries. It also informs policy makers and the general public on the importance of vital statistics and hence further improving the vital statistics system.

Socio-economic policy planning and monitoring requires accurate data on births, deaths and population, in order to plan effectively for provision of health, education, employment and social security services. This publication contains detailed information on the compilation of demographic data using a range of complementary methods which can be combined to suit national conditions. Topics covered include: planning collection of fertility and mortality data; fieldwork, data processing and archiving; evaluation, estimation and dissemination; civil registration records, censuses and surveys as data sources.

This handbook compiles methods for gathering, organizing and disseminating data to inform policy and manage health systems worldwide. Contributing authors describe national and international structures for generating data and explain the relevance of ethics, policy, epidemiology, health economics, demography, statistics, geography and qualitative methods to describing population health. The reader, whether a student of global health, public health practitioner, programme manager, data analyst or policymaker, will appreciate the methods, context and importance of collecting and using global health data.

Healthcare providers, consumers, researchers and policy makers are inundated with unmanageable amounts of information, including evidence from healthcare research. It has become impossible for all to have the time and resources to find, appraise and interpret this evidence and incorporate it into healthcare decisions. Cochrane Reviews respond to this challenge by identifying, appraising and synthesizing research-based evidence and presenting it in a standardized format, published in The Cochrane Library (www.thecochranelibrary.com). The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions contains methodological guidance for the preparation and maintenance of Cochrane intervention reviews. Written in a clear and accessible format, it is the essential manual for all those preparing, maintaining and reading Cochrane reviews. Many of the principles and methods described here are appropriate for systematic reviews applied to other types of research and to systematic reviews of interventions undertaken by others. It is hoped therefore that this book will be invaluable to all those who want to understand the role of systematic reviews, critically appraise published reviews or perform reviews themselves.