In June 2016,  Vytenis Andriukaitis, EU Commissioner in charge of Health, announced a new initiative for 2016-2017 entitled “State of Health in the EU”. This initiative will bring together internationally recognised expertise to provide Member States with evidence on health that is relevant to their specific country context and that can help maximise the effectiveness, accessibility and resilience of their health systems.

The State of Health in the EU comprises four components with the following timeline:

  1. November 2016: publication of the “Health at a Glance: Europe 2016” report prepared by the OECD in cooperation with the Commission. The structure of this report will be aligned to the objectives of the 2014 Communication on effectiveness, accessibility and resilience of health systems.
  2. November 2017: a set of 28 individual country health profiles developed by the OECD and the Observatory in cooperation with the Commission. These expert-driven, analytical documents will provide complementary data and indicators, and emphasise the particular characteristics and challenges of each Member State.
  3. November 2017: a Commission analysis accompanying the 28 country health profiles, giving Member States a succinct overview of the information provided in the first two products, linking them to the broader EU agenda and emphasising cross-cutting policy implications.
  4. From December 2017: exchanges between individual EU countries and the Commission, the OECD and the Observatory, to discuss concrete implications of country findings, and help Member States make the best use of gathered evidence.

For more information: http://ec.europa.eu/health/state/summary/index_en.htm