Euro-Peristat Newsletter: June 2017 Issue n°4

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EURO-PERISTAT NEWSLETTER

Issue n°4 - June 2017

NEWS: Euro-Peristat at the BRIDGE Health meeting in Brussels, April 20th, 2017

The BRIDGE Health project has investigated several possibilities for a comprehensive, integrated and sustainable EU health information system.

Final recommendations from BRIDGE Health for the creation of a sustainable information system, including a possible European Research Infrastructure Consortium on Health Information for Research and Evidence-based Policy (HIREP-ERIC) were shared with experts and officials from DG Santé, Eurostat, OECD and WHO Europe, at the Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels on April 20th, 2017.

Have a look at the BRIDGE Concept Paper here.

BRIDGE Health is supported under the EU action of the Public Health Programme implemented by the Consumers, Health and Food Executive Agency of the European Commission.

NETWORK UPDATE: Access to maternity unit rankings in Europe

Many European countries provide official assessments of individual maternity or neonatal units through their health and research agencies.

In other countries, parental networks and non-profit organizations have come together to provide quality assurance data to pregnant women and their families.

To explore how we could make these data more widely available, we asked Euro-Peristat Scientific Committee members to share national websites and reports where maternity and neonatal unit rankings are reported: 13 countries provided us with links.

For an overview of these data sources, see here.

LATEST PUBLICATION from Euro-Peristat

Can the Apgar score be used for international comparisons of newborn health?

We examined population-level distributions in Apgar scores and associations with neonatal mortality in Europe.

The Apgar score at 5 minutes was included in routine data sources in 23 countries, covering 2,183,472 live births. Scores <7 ranged from 0.3 to 2.4% across countries in 2004 and 2010. There were also large differences in healthy baby scores: scores of 10 ranged from 8.8% to 92.7% whereas scores of 9 or 10 ranged from 72.9% to 96.8%.

Large variations in the distribution of Apgar scores likely due to national scoring practices, make Apgar an unsuitable indicator for benchmarking newborn health across countries. Country-level trends over time in Apgar may reflect real changes and merit further investigation. See our article

INVITED COMMENTARIES ON A GRAPH

Reflecting on rates of post-term births in European countries

Dr. Karin Källen, Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Lund University, and Methodological Support Unit, National Board of Health and Welfare, Sweden.

Dr. Sophie Alexander, Professor, Perinatal Epidemiology and Reproductive Health Unit, Université Libre de Bruxelles, and Euro-Peristat Scientific Committee member from Belgium.

Find out what our experts think

OTHER HEALTH INITIATIVES: The RECAP Preterm Project

The RECAP Preterm Project aims to improve the health, development and quality of life of children and adults born very preterm by creating a platform of European cohorts to promote data sharing and collaborative research.

The project brings together 20 cohorts with children born very preterm or with very low birth weight (VPT/VLBW cohorts) from 13 European countries as well as the multiple stakeholders who have been involved in their development and use. More information is available on the RECAP Preterm website (see here) which went live last month.

The RECAP preterm project is funded by H2020.

Contact information :

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