Health at a Glance: Europe is the first step in the State of Health in the EU cycle of knowledge brokering. It is designed to provide a cross-country assessment of national health systems’ performance in the European Union. It also provides more in-depth analysis on two important topics in the thematic chapters upfront.
The publication is divided in two parts. Part I contains the two thematic chapters. In this edition, Chapter 1 reviews recent developments in health workforce supply and demand across EU countries, the available evidence about current shortages, and policy actions to increase the supply of health workers and alleviate the expected increase in demand for certain categories of workers due to population ageing, notably through innovative task-sharing approaches and the growing use of new technologies. Chapter 2 reviews the most recent trends in life expectancy, healthy life expectancy, morbidity and disability among people aged over 65 in EU countries to assess to what extent people live not only longer lives but also healthier lives, and reviews policies to promote healthy longevity and reduce the burden of diseases and disabilities among older people in the EU.
Part II includes six chapters that provide an overview of key indicators of health and health systems across EU Member States, candidate countries, European Free Trade Association countries and the United Kingdom. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the health status of the population and some of the main risk factors to health. Chapter 5 reviews the most recent trends in health spending, including the temporary impact of the pandemic on health expenditure per capita and as a share of GDP, as well as the mix in public and private financing. The last three chapters are structured around the three objectives set out in the 2014 European Commission Communication on effective, accessible and resilient health systems (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52014DC0215).
The data presented in this publication come mainly from official national statistics and have been collected in many cases through the administration of joint questionnaires by the OECD and Eurostat. The data have been validated by the two organisations to ensure that they meet high standards of data quality and comparability. Some data also come from European surveys co‑ordinated by Eurostat, notably the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) survey, as well as from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study and other sources.