European Health for All family of databases

Since the mid-1980s, Member States of the WHO European Region have been reporting essential health-related statistics to the Health for All (HFA) family of databases, making it one of WHO’s oldest sources of data. As it is based on reported data, rather than estimates, the HFA family of databases is also particularly valuable.

HFA databases bring together the indicators that are part of major monitoring frameworks relevant to the Region, such as Health 2020 and the Sustainable Development Goals. The indicators cover basic demographics, health status, health determinants and risk factors, as well as health care resources, expenditures and more.

HFA databases allow access to regional, national and some subnational indicators and metadata, which are visualized through interactive online tools in the Health for All explorer. Data, metadata, graphs and maps can be exported or shared online and on social media.

Where do the data come from?

HFA data are compiled from various sources, including a network of country experts, WHO/Europe's technical programmes, and partner organizations such as the statistical office of the European Union (Eurostat), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and United Nations agencies. Data are updated annually.

WHO/Europe constantly upgrades its online databases and analysis tools to make it easier to access and visualize the indicators. Data are now integrated into the WHO/Europe Data Warehouse with a public application programming interface (API).

HFA is now part of the European Health Information Gateway

The integrated HFA databases are now a part of the European Health Information Gateway, a website that shows data in themes and makes it easy for users to visualize information and use integrated information discovery tools. A mobile application, called the European Health Statistics App, makes a subset of the indicators available for mobile and offline use. The indicators can also be accessed via the API.