What happens when performance measurement and management (PMM) is applied to public health systems? This review of the experiences of high-income jurisdictions reveals considerable challenges, some familiar from the general public management literature and some more unique to public health. To aid understanding, the PMM ladder, a framework for evaluating PMM systems is developed and applied to 55 public health measurement systems from Australia, Canada, EU, New Zealand, UK and US. Results indicate that: considerable measurement is occurring for informational purposes; measurement focuses more on clinical than on population health measures; and there is relatively little use of measurement results for improving management. Results demonstrate that much public health performance measurement is restricted to population health outcomes and fails to include more proximate activity and output measures that would be more useful for managing public health organizations. There are early signs of the emergence of a new breed of public health performance measurement that attempts to do just this. The PMM ladder proved useful for assessing efforts across a range of jurisdictions. It allows policymakers and managers to easily compare their PMM efforts with others and assists researchers in assessing what happens when PMM is applied to public health.