Core Target 5: Health Outcomes

Where BC Ranks, Provincial Comparison

Core Target Five, health outcomes, is derived from five performance indicators (PI 17-PI 21): life expectancy at birth, cancer mortality, cardiovascular disease mortality, infant mortality, and potential years of life lost. Health outcome rankings are based on the simple average of each province's rank on these five indicators.

Canada has seen significant improvements in all of the health outcome measures tracked here and most provinces have seen improvement on all five. British Columbia started with, and maintained, the best health outcome performance among the provinces over the entire 1990 to 2008 period.

BC achieved a first-place position in overall health outcomes this year due to its top ranks in life expectancy at birth (2009/10), cancer mortality (2008) and potential years of life lost (2009), its third-place rank in cardiovascular mortality (2008) and its fourth-place rank in infant mortality (2008).

An overview of health risks in BC and Canada is available in the Health Risk Factors Topic Box.