Trust in health institutions can improve health outcomes: how is it measured?

Trust is indispensable in health systems as it underpins the patient-provider relationship, facilitating open communication, treatment adherence, and preventive care. Additionally, trust in healthcare institutions fosters healthcare access, system performance, and public health interventions, promoting better health outcomes and equity in healthcare delivery.

Measuring trust in health systems has gained significance, particularly amidst efforts to mitigate health outcomes from transmission of COVID-19. However, existing measures of trust have faced limitations, including a lack of differentiation between provider and macro-level structures and inconsistency in dimensions explored. Literature predominantly focuses on measuring trust in health professionals rather than systems, revealing shortcomings such as inadequate reporting of scale dimensions and limited validity and reliability testing. Recent research has aimed to address these gaps, emphasizing the multidimensional nature of trust and the need for improved validity and differentiation from related concepts.

W&W Sustainability Lead, Dr. Stephanie Hanna, synthesizes evidence to identify and evaluate recent studies on trust measurement in health systems and social institutions to inform future research agendas on how trust can be measured and utilized to improve health outcomes.

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