ABSTRACT
Prevention of premature death, disease, and disability is the main goal of public health policies, and decision makers expect to be provided with efficient indicators covering these fields as being easily interpretable and actionable for setting policy objectives. The use of perceived health measures appears to be justified by their direct link with the general objectives of improving health status of populations defined at the national and international levels. Perceived health incorporates the broad definition of multidimensional health including mental and physical well-being. Perceived health indicators are needed at the population level and are effectively in use in many health systems, near or in complement of so-called more objective measurement of health or as a whole. They are also used as predictors of subsequent mortality. They are often considered as health outcomes per se and analyzed in terms of their determinants.
