Health indicators as indicators of the progress of civilization

The health status of a population defined by deliberately chosen indicators can be treated as one of principal elements of the civilization progress constituted by the development of the public health area, i.e. improvement of particular indicators relating directly to the health of the population. Within different societies this process runs at different rates and has different priorities. The activities aiming at increasing its dynamics and rationalizing its targets may contribute to the civilization progress in its health dimension. The paper is an attempt to apply a taxonomic method of international comparisons in order to set the population health development goals. The method is illustrated by the example of 28 EU countries. The health status of the populations of these countries has been operationalized in the set of six indicators. On the basis of applying the method some procedures of setting out the development perspective within the population health area is illustrated using the example of Poland.