Overview - Health
What information can I find here?
Health statistics measure both objective and subjective aspects of people's health. They cover different kinds of health-related aspects, including key indicators on the functioning of the health care systems and health and safety at work.
Data available in this section covers the following main topics:
- Public health
- Health status: self-reported health and morbidity, functional and activity limitations, injuries;
- Health determinants: overweight and obesity, physical activity, risky behaviours such as tobacco and alcohol consumption;
- Health care: health care expenditure, resources (staff and facilities) and activities (hospital and ambulatory services);
- Disability: prevalence of disability, employment, barriers to the social integration of disabled persons;
- Causes of death: national and regional mortality by causes of death.
- Health and safety at work
- Accidents at work: number of accidents, causes and circumstances of accidents.
For more detailed information on the data covered, please see the page 'Information on data' in this section.
Why are these statistics important and what is the European Commission doing in this regard?
Health statistics are used to monitor the EU Health strategy, the EU Strategy on health and safety at work and their contribution to the Europe 2020 strategy. They have a key role to support the elaboration of evidence-based policies both at national and European levels.
Those statistics also serve for calculating indicators of the health portfolio used for the monitoring of the social protection and social inclusion and the set of indicators known as the European Core Health Indicators (ECHI) and are part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
