Most countries in the European Region address environmental health through National Environment and Health Action Plans (NEHAPs) and are committed to develop children’s environment and health action plans (CEHAPs). NEHAPs for more than 40 countries in the pan-European region are available in the WHO/Europe website at http://www.euro.who.int/envhealthpolicy/Plans/20020809_1.Tools to support the achievement of the CEHAPE priority goals, including country trainings on children's environment and health, are available in the WHO/Europe website on children's health and environment.
Assessing the information needs can reveal for example the need for improved coordination procedures, more transparent policy structures, enhanced methods and tools for policy implementation and evaluation, evidence-based knowledge and data. An accountable policy also needs information to enable the identification, formulation, selection and evaluation of policy objectives with suitable policy instruments and through collaboration among the appropriate legislative and executive authorities.
ENHIS assessed the
information needs
for the main national policies on environment and health in 18 European countries. The main findings are:
- Policies should be grounded on the causal evidence between qualitative data, quantitative exposure of the population and public health determinants. Therefore, further research and data collection is needed to increase knowledge on the relationship between health effects of environmental conditions,
- Implementation measures should clearly refer to the policy purpose and objectives. Outdoor air monitoring measures, for example, do not link to population exposure, thus the health improvement aspect that is explicitly mentioned as main purpose in the EC Air Quality Framework Directive is not accounted for.
- Willingness to act and collaborate with diverse sectors, such as for example the industry or the media, is of high importance for the success of policies. Guidance for creating inter-sectorial collaborating structures to integrate efforts of various ministries and sectors would be helpful.
- Specific actions in schools and pre-school childcare centres to target on the population that is most vulnerable to environmental hazards. Educational policies at school age combined with enforced control mechanisms are likely to have a strong effect on children’s health and behaviour.
- Ideally, monitoring or surveillance systems allow for evaluation of health–focused policy goals and targets that aim explicitly for health risk reduction from specific hazard sources. Health-focused abatement measures should logically follow from non-compliance.
- Further development of indicators for use in policy evaluation is needed. For example, there is an indicated need for health outcome indicators to assess morbidity and mortality incidence from road traffic accidents and air pollutants, based on validated and actual data sets.
- More national exposure assessment and health impact studies are needed to assess and compare the effectiveness of different policy actions in terms of health improvement. Harmonization of the assessment methods in different countries is desirable. Furthermore assessment studies on the level of knowledge and risk perception of the population can be of help in policy evaluation and result in more effective policies and campaigns.
Four of the 18 countries also analysed more in depth the information needs for an environmental health topic of their choice. The four CEHAPE RPGs served as a framework for selecting the issue.
-
Bulgaria
and
Spain
reviewed their tobacco control policies, in particular the actions regulating environmental tobacco smoke exposure (RPG3)
-
Italy
evaluated the national traffic safety policy (RPG2)
-
Finland
discussed its indoor radon policy (RPG4)
|
|
