In addition to funding health indicator work proper, the Commission also created an executive agency (PHEA, later EAHC) to help administer the Public Health programme. Public Health Programme Projects Already before the EU Public health programmes kinase inhibitor Enzastaurin Eurostat commissioned work on the contents and the comparability of national European health interview surveys. It was carried out by the Dutch Central Office for Statistics (Hupkens C, CBS). The researcher��s conclusion was that by year 2000 the only comparable health interview data were those on the Body Mass Index. Firsts in the arena of horizontal Public Health programme projects were the HIS/HES projects [8] (2000 to 2003) related to gathering of health (indicator) data by surveys.
They reviewed the existing national health surveys and, via recommendations, developed the methods for gathering health data by population surveys. The true firsts of the comprehensive health indicator flagship projects were ECHI-1 and ECHI-2, carried out between 2000 and 2005 [9], [10]. The proposed ECHI shortlist covered indicators in the following fields; A. Demographic and socioeconomic factors B. Health status C. Determinants of health D. Health interventions: health services E. Health interventions: health promotion. The indicator work was carried out in close collaboration between various EU public health projects and MS experts. The projects reviewed the available health indicators, assessed the needs of policy relevant indicators, selected those best suited for a core set of indicators, and developed several new ones.
Finally, not all recommended indicators were available in the countries. Initially, the ECHI process yielded several hundred indicators but soon there was agreement with the Commission that a more limited number of well-focused indicators should be selected for implementation. The concise set of the core indicators comprised those assessed by the majority of experts to be of high relevance for obtaining an overview of health and diseases, their occurrence, level, distribution and time trends. The ECHI �Cprojects also initiated the development of criteria and definitions for the indicators. This was important since prior to ECHI various international data sources used different definitions and weights resulting in different indicators, which caused unnecessary confusion.
The process finally led to the ECHI shortlist of 88 common health indicators, with their definitions. A follow-up project of the survey work mentioned above and a complement also to ECHI was the HIS/HES database (later called EUHSID) [11]. Today, everybody has access to a user-friendly database comprising all national European health surveys (HIS and HES) carried out in the 2000s, and a number of national health surveys from Anacetrapib other OECD countries.