Principles and challenges of child health and safety indicators.

Indicators are an important tool for monitoring population health and service responses to population need. However, not only do they need to be empirically based, but they should measure those areas of most significance to the population group concerned. Their objective is to highlight areas needing attention, rather than to show individual detailed causes. The present paper reports key work in child health indicators and the challenges faced by those seeking to apply them to child safety and injury prevention.