Health is influenced by many factors outside the health system. This is often expressed by decomposing contributors to health into factors that sum to 100 percent. In this commentary, we assess the (few) strengths and (many) limitations of such decompositions. We conclude that they fail to be useful for policy guidance. We conclude by proposing an alternative approach to assessing how various factors affect health: evaluations of interventions.
Keywords: delivery of health care; economics; policy; public health; quality of health care.
© 2020 The Authors. Health Services Research published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Health Research and Educational Trust.