The European health report 2002

‘Matching services to new needs’ encapsulates the WHO Regional Office for Europe’s new strategy for work with countries. The Regional Office seeks continuously to improve the relevance and quality of its services to the Member States and their populations. The purpose is to support them in developing and sustaining their health policies, health systems and public health programmes.

Governments and policy-makers are increasingly aware that access to knowledge enables better policy-making practice. The policy-makers of the various Member States are also more and more aware that they face common challenges and can learn useful lessons from across national boundaries that shed light on their own specific national situation. The challenge for the Regional Office is to build on the existing data and experience, to facilitate the sharing of this experience and, ultimately, to make those data and indicators practically comparable across the countries.

The European health report responds to the statutory requirement to provide the Member States with essential public health information. It provides a broad but concise picture of the health status and health determinants in the Region, and identifies areas for public health action for the Member States and the European public health community. The report focuses on concrete evidence useful for decision-makers in public health. Its role is to summarize and feed back to Member States the information created, deposited and ‘accredited’ during the Regional Office’s work with Member States on key topics and issues in public health in Europe, in the context of the values and principles of WHO as ‘one Organization’.

The measure of success of this publication will be its appreciation and use by Member States in their endeavour to improve their own health policies and systems.