Core Health Indicators in the WHO European Region 2012

The Core Health Indicators 2012 represents a summary of key health and health systems data annually collected by the Member States in cooperation with the WHO Regional Office for Europe for the Health for All databases. The continuous effort towards the production of reliable and accessible evidence is allowing our Regional Office to fulfil its monitoring mandate and to put into effect its strategic vision for the role of health systems, as they are laid out in the new WHO Health 2020 policy.

Our data collection system goes beyond the compilation of data on the health status of the population in the Member States and, increasingly, aims to inform decision makers and the broad public on those factors which lead to improved health and well-being.

Accordingly, this publication groups the core health indicators into the following health domains: demographic and socioeconomic context, leading causes of mortality and morbidity, health systems resources, coverage and utilization, behaviours, lifestyles and the environment. The cross-reference with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is a leitmotif of this succinct list of indicators.

Additionally, the distribution and trends of mortality by broad groups of causes of death are highlighted as a special topic for analysis with additional thematic maps and graphs.The sources primarily include data collected with great care by national health authorities, the Regional Office technical units, WHO Headquarters  and various international agencies.