Excerpt: In 2008, [the nonprofit State of the USA, Inc.] asked the Institute of Medicine's Committee on the State of the USA Health Indicators to provide guidance on 20 key indicators to be used on the organization's website that would be valuable in assessing health. Each indicator was required to demonstrate: a clear importance to health or health care, the availability of reliable, high quality data to measure change in the indica?tors over time, the potential to be measured with federally collected data, and the capability to be broken down by geography, populations subgroups in?cluding race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Taken together, the selected indicators reflect the overall health of the nation and the efficiency and efficacy of U.S. health systems. The complete list of 20 can be found in the report brief and report.

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