Estimation of population denominators for the humanitarian health sector

Overview

This guidance note accompanies the Global Health Cluster’s Standards for Public Health Information Services in Activated Health Clusters and Other Humanitarian Health Coordination Mechanisms. It specifically:

• provides an overview of the applications of population denominators in the humanitarian health sect or;
• briefly introduces methods for estimation of population size in emergencies;
• demonstrates how to appraise and triangulate existing estimates;
• summarises calculations and parameters required to estimate the size of different vulnerable population groups;
• describes a systematic approach for estimating health service catchment populations; and
• suggests a simple method for defining populations in need of humanitarian health services.

This guidance note does not contain detailed methods or software/data collection instruments for primary data collection to estimate population denominators. Where appropriate, key methodological references and provided in the bibliography.