Abstract

The Association of Directors of Municipal Public Health Services has appointed the Department of Epidemiology of the National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection (RIVM) to analyse and report on the project: Regional Health Profiles. This Association developed a set of health indicators that could be used to describe the health status of the population. The indicators include demographic characteristics, mortality data, hospital discharge data etc. The goal of the project was to obtain a valid overview on the health status in each Public Health Service District (PHSD). At the same time the standardized methodology enables to compare between districts or to compare a district with the overall situation in the Netherlands. Notably district policy makers need this basic information for the local health policy in order to plan intervention programs or health care facilities. The project started in January 1991 by collecting databases from authorized registries in het Netherlands such as the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) of Dutch Center for Health Care Information (SIG). The products of this project are a book, a demonstration diskette, and a diskette with basic - less aggregated - figures for each district. The book describes the health situation per district for each of the 19 indicators. Furthermore a map section on the situation in the 12 provinces and the Netherlands as a whole is included. The demonstration diskette is a user-friendly automated version of the book. The project will be finished in March '92. Possibilities to repeat the project every two years are under consideration.