European Urban Health Indicator System (EURO-URHIS)

Background: The majority of European citizens live in urban areas. This is projected to rise over the next two decades. Improving urban health in Europe is thus a crtical issue.

Urban health and related policies are important issues for the European Union. At the city level, it is difficult to find data to allow comparison, benchmarking and investigating disease trends over time. EURO-URHIS has been funded by DG SANCO with partners in most of the

European countries. EURO-URHIS has used the European Community Health Indicators (ECHI) shortlist with additions deemed necessary to describe urban health. The aims of the project are to develop a comprehensive urban health information/knowledge system to help identify and prioritise urban health problems, and monitor the actions taken to address them.

Methods: A review of previous European urban health projects was used to formulate a system of urban health indicators. Fifty indicators were chosen that best represented the needs of urban health. A questionnaire was piloted to collect data on the availability of indicators for urban health. This was sent to 60 cities across Europe to ascertain data available at urban level.

Results: Many of the indicators were available at urban level with similar definitions. A system of indicators was developed for describing the health of a city's population named EURO-URHIS 39 that would allow transnational comparison.

Conclusions: Urban health is a priority for Europe. In this paper we will present the groundbreaking work from the past and present. Urban health indicators across Europe can be routinely collected to help with evidence-based policy making at urban level. The cross-sectional/longitudinal analyses of these indicators should allow transnational comparisons for European cities. EURO-URHIS 2, funded by DG Research will collect data for

benchmarking and tools relevant for policy makers. Further details can be found on www.urhis.eu .