European Commission - Public Health: healthindicators.org

DOCUMENTATION SHEET FOR:

Indicator: 87. Policies and practices on healthy lifestyles

SHORTLIST sub-division: E) Health interventions: health promotion

Status: development section

Date first publication documentation sheet: 07-01-2012

PDF version of documentation sheet

Definition

A composite index of regulations and good practices on promoting healthier nutrition.

Key issues and problems

Topic needs much further development. The keys issues are:

1. At the moment there is no satisfactory proposal for indicator definition, calculation and data sources.
2. The indicators recommended by various (EU co-funded) projects usually include only either alcohol or tobacco related policies. Is that enough? Other possible areas to be added include policies to reduce exposure to sunlight, injuries, suicide. Health promotion activities at the workplace, schools etc. are under indicator 88.
3. Distinction should be made between comprehensive programmes and single programmes on e.g. smoking, physical activity, nutrition, stress management etc. Comprehensive programmes are considered to be more effective.
4. The index should contain policy items aimed both at individual behaviour and collective actions, such as building promoting physical activity, taxes and trade regulations, etc.
5. For pragmatical reasons, we may focus on smoking, alcohol and physical activity in this indicator, since here might be some data. Consult the alcohol programme and other current programmes for this.

Preferred data type and data source

Preferred data type

Various types of data sources.

Preferred data source

Not decided yet.

Data availability

Eurostat, WHO-HfA and OECD: No data available.

EU co-financed projects have collected or are collecting data related to especially alcohol related policies.

There are currently no data available to monitor the level of implementation of health promotion activities at the workplace.

Rationale

This is an important area of activities in health promotion. Indicators for monitoring these areas should be developed.

Remarks

Recommended indicators on alcohol related policies by EU co-funded projects include:

1a) WP Lifestyles: A composite indicator of a) Regulations, e.g. legislation, enforcement and adjudication (“Alcohol report”, 2006, p283) of the alcohol market price and tax measures; b) Restrictions on availability; c) Regulations on advertising, promotion and sponsorship (p258 of “Alcohol report” (2006), e.g. alcohol advertisement restrictions (equivalent to smoking advertisement restrictions (4.1.3).

1b) WP Lifestyles: Regulations aiming at the reduction of alcohol consumption and its consequences (p240ff, p251 of “Alcohol report”, 2006) including labelling of warning on containers of alcoholic products (p253, p357/8, p414 of “Alcohol report”, 2006) (see chapters 7-9 of “Alcohol report”, 2006).

Other proposed indicators are:

2) WORKHEALTH-1 -project: Proposed indicator ”Health promotion activities at the workplace” (with recommendations on how to measure them by HIS).

3) EUHPID: Sunlight exposure, injury, suicide, healthy nutrition.

References

• WHO-Europe databases on alcohol and tobacco, and nutrition policy
• World Bank, Economics of tobacco control database
• WORKHEALTH-1 (2002-2004) and WORKHEALTH-2 (2005-7)
• WORKHEALTH-1 project final report “Indicators for work-related health monitoring in Europe” (Julia Kreis and Wolfgang Bödeker) from December 2004
• The European Health Promotion Indicators Development, EUHPID (2002-2004)The European Health Promotion Indicators Development, EUHPID (2002-2004): Davies, J.K., Bauer, G. and Pelikan, J. (2006) The EUPHID Health Development Model for the classification of public health indicators. Health Promotion International, 21 (2). pp. 153-159.
• The Comprehensive Database of Health Promotion Policies, Infrastructures and Practices, HP-Source
• Working Party on Information on Lifestyle and Specific Subpopulations
• WP Lifestyles / Alcohol Report (2006): “Alcohol in Europe: a public health perspective. A report for the European Commission” (article by Peter Anderson and Ben Baumberg; June 2006)
• WP Lifestyles / Alcohol Report (2006): “Alcohol in Europe: a public health perspective. A report for the European Commission”
• International Union for Health Promotion and Education, IUPHE

Work to do

• Needs much further development.
• Consult current programmes on alcohol, smoking, physical activity.
• Monitor WHO and World Bank databases.
• Monitor Health promotion networks for possible data.