Round table: Strengthening capacities in health information for better public health practice in Member States
Authors:   Organised by: InfAct, Sciensano, EUPHA (PHMR) Chair persons: Claudia Habl - Austria, Herman Van Oyen - Belgium
Published: November 2019

According to Sir Michael Marmot: “To address inequalities in health in Europe, our first step must be to address the inequalities in health information (HI). All too commonly where health is poorest, HI tends to be poorest. HI is absent or incomplete just where we need it most.” One of the specific objectives of the Joint Action on Health Information (InfAct) is to reduce HI inequalities between and within EU Member States (MS). InfAct is addressing this through various capacity strengthening exercises including the design of a sustainable EU HI training programme. In this workshop, a first presentation will describe the development of the HI training programme for professionals working in HI within MS institutions. Subsequently, four capacity strengthening exercise will be presented illustrating potential topics to be covered in such a sustainable HI training programme. These 5 short presentations will feed the discussion of the workshop organised as a round table.

The first exercise is an assessment of HI systems carried out by InfAct through peer review in 9 countries using an adjusted WHO Europe tool. The exercise builds on the framework of mutual learning and good practice exchange to identify in a standardised way strengths and limitations, and recommendations for direct and long-term improvement of their HI system.

The second exercise presents 2 workshops given by InfAct on the European and National Burden of Disease (BoD) methodologies. The effort contributed to harmonising BoD methodologies at national and EU levels, thereby increasing comparability and facilitating knowledge exchange on BoD bilaterally and multilaterally in the EU.

The third exercise presents an example of capacity building activities organised in the framework of a national prevention programme on cardiovascular risk assessment, which includes training of health professionals, provision of training material and risk evaluation tools, implementation in clinical practice, health data collection, and feedback of results in the community.

The fourth exercise presents examples of capacity building activities by the European Health Examination Survey (EHES) initiative to establish a sustainable European network on nationally representative Health Examination Surveys (HESs), through hands-on training events, online training materials, person-to-person consultations, site visits and networking.

This workshop provides participants insights on current activities in HI capacity strengthening in Europe which address health (information) inequalities. Additionally, participants will be able to provide feedback on the development of the sustainable HI training programme and potential elements that could be included based on four practical examples. The participants will be able to highlight their needs in health information training by interacting through a round table panel discussion.

Key messages

Health information capacity strengthening is essential to address health inequalities. The workshop identifies what a sustainable EU HI training program can provide. Mutual learning, knowledge and good practice exchange can be organised in various ways – we show practical current examples on how it has been done.