The European Commission has made public a comprehensive set of health indicators in order to help policy makers track developments in the health status of the European population.
The ECHI (European Community Health Indicators) project was carried out in the framework of the Health Monitoring Programme and the Community Public Health Programme 2003-2008.
The result is a list of ‘indicators’, developing comparable information on heatlh status, and covering:
Demographic and social economic factors (eg gender, age, fertility, unemployement);
Health status (eg cancers, road traffic, injuries at work place, life expectancy);
Determinants of health (eg alcohol, tocacoo and vegetable consumption );
Health services (eg expenditures, health care professionals).
The ECHI indicators aim to cover the 25 Member States, the EU Candidate Countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey), the West Balkan Countries, the USA, Canada and Japan. They are developed in close collaboration with Eurostat, DG Research, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Health Organistion (WHO), and DG Sanco own resources.
A set of regional (or sub-national) health indicators for the European Union is also being developed by the ISARE Project and by Eurostat in order to fix objectives in the field of health. As regards the ECHI national indicators, these regional health indicators should adhere to standard definitions and methodologies in order to make for comparability.
European Commission, Dissemination of health information and data
