Healthy Finland survey as the latest uptake for 50 years' of population health monitoring in Finland
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1
Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Finland
2
National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Finland
Publication date: 2023-04-27
Popul. Med. 2023;5(Supplement):A1925
ABSTRACT
Background and Objective: Up-to-date, representative, and high-quality health information is needed to support evidence-informed policy making and innovative research. In Finland, population-based health examination surveys (HESs) have been conducted in regular phase since early 1960’s to obtain information on population health and health determinants. This information has been widely used for policy making, planning of prevention programmes and evaluation of the prevention programmes, as epidemiological Background: for clinical treatment guidelines of several diseases, and for research. Methods: The latest HES called Healthy Finland is ongoing and will run until June 2023. Survey planning was started already in early 2021 with a multidisciplinary group including representatives from different stakeholders. The Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) had the responsibility of the coordination of the preparation phase as well as conducting the survey. Results: Survey sample includes 66.000 randomly selected adults aged 18+ years living in Finland. In the 1st phase, they all receive a questionnaire to be filled in. Questionnaire covers topics such as quality of life, health, use of health care services, lifestyles, background information, work ability and functional capacity, wellbeing, accidents, and sexual and reproductive health. In the 2nd phase, 10.000 of those selected to the survey will be invited to health examination including for example anthropometric measurements, blood pressure, spirometry test, collection of biological samples and for a sub-sample, a dental examination. Information from national registries (e.g. socioeconomic status, use of medications and diagnosis) will be linked to the data. Conclusions: Information obtained from the Healthy Finland survey will be used for the evaluation of wellbeing service counties which are responsible for the organization of social and health care services in Finland. Survey will generate new information about health inequalities by providing information not only by age and sex but also by education and other socio-economic indicators.