Public Health Indicators for Europe: Context, Selection, Definition

This ECHI-2 report (ECHI = European Community Health Indicators) presents a list of indicators in the field of public health. The indicators range from health status (e.g. cancer incidence) through health determinants (e.g. nutrition, air pollution) to preventive actions and health care systems. The list is intended to support public health policies, by providing increasing quality, consensus and uniformity of public health data collection within the 25 EU Member States. The results presented in the report include the following: (1) the ECHI 'long list', which is primarily an inventory of indicators proposed by many expert projects supported by DG Sanco, arranged according to a robust conceptual frame; (2) the concept of 'user-windows' which allows for the interest-oriented selection of subsets of indicators; (3) the ECHI shortlist, which is selected as a subset from the long list for first priority implementation; and (4) a web-based application (ICHI-2, International Compendium of Health Indicators) (www.healthindicators.org) in which the ECHI indicators are listed, along with the indicators used by Eurostat, WHO-Europe (the HFA database) and the OECD (OECD health data). The report is the result of six years work carried out by an expert team from 16 EU Member States and Norway, and representatives from international organisations. Especially the shortlist has been taken up by DG Sanco for stimulating further work in public health information. The data for the shortlist are being presented by DG Sanco on their Europa website. Several Member States use ECHI as a guideline for the development of national health information systems.