Health at a Glance: Europe 2018: Comparative analyses of the health status in the EU

The report Health at a Glance: Europe 2018 presents comparative analyses of the health status of EU citizens and the performance of the health systems of the 28 EU Member States, 5 candidate countries and 3 EFTA countries. It was released in November 2018 by the European Commission and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Amongst other topics the report focuses on the need to improve mental health as well as prevent mental illness. It calculates the costs of mental health diseases in Europe, which sum up to more than 4% of GDP across the EU. However, multisectoral costs, which are in the centre of the research in the PECUNIA project, were not comprehensively included. Instead, the report focused on cost estimates based on the earlier European Brain Council funded Cost of Brain Disorders study. In addition, the authors outline possible strategies to spend more economically in health. The second part of the publication provides a discussion of progress in improving the effectiveness, accessibility and resilience of European health systems.

Background

The publication was released in the course of the initiative State of Health in the EU, which was launched by the European Commission in 2016 and gives insights into health and health systems in EU countries. In this way, the initiative wants to assist EU Member States in improving the health of their citizens and the performance of their health systems and responds to a need to build up country-specific and cross-country knowledge on the topic. The report, which is published every even-numbered year, presents a cross-EU overview on health as a basis for the country-specific analysis that is to follow. The continuous cycle is developed in cooperation with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.

Download the report Health at a Glance: Europe 2018.

To view the press release by the European Commission click here.