Impact

The impact of any society effected change could never be properly measured because the impact of anything on society is the human impact the impact it has on millions of individuals. The real impact of a war is the impact of the amount of families that are grieving over lost loved ones. We can put a number to the dead, but we can not measure the grief, to try to measure grief, would be to try to compair grief, and would be insulting to all who feel it. The impact of giving people access to health care could be measured in the money it costs to do so, but that is undermining the importance of that care to the people who it has helped, the real value of it is in the way it has changed their lives, and trying to measure quality of life or compair it in any terms other than better or worse undermines the importance it holds for the person living that life.
We like to try to measure everything, so we can say we did the best we could with what we had, and so that we can prove it, to ourselves, and to everyone involved. But all the human feelings, to things we effect, the way we really have an impact on each other, can not be measured or compared. We do not have to prove to people involved what we have done, they already know, their feelings are strong. We don't need a way to measure it. Good or bad they know, and by seeing these people as individuals with lives and feelings we'll know it too.