European Environment and Health Information System (ENHIS)

What is ENHIS?

The ENHIS project was a two-phase project co-funded by the European Commission and coordinated by WHO/Europe.

• Phase 1:
• Phase 2: ENHIS-2 (2005-2007) aimed to roll out a "comprehensive information and knowledge system to help identify, prioritize and address wide-spread environmental health problems in countries and to enable monitoring the effects of actions taken."

The system was designed with four main functions in mind:

1. monitoring of the environment and health situation and trends and evaluation of the effectiveness of policies in the countries of the pan-European region;
2. allowing comparisons across countries on the basis of targets set in European-wide action programmes;
3. providing regular reporting on environment and health to support decision makers and to provide information to professionals and the general public;
4. facilitating exchange of information, data and knowledge as well as good practice examples in the field of public health and the environment.

Project outputs

1. Core set of indicators

• a core set of indicators, selected on the basis of relevance and availability of data, describing environmental exposures, health effects and policy measures for these issues. These indicators are also meant to help monitoring and evaluating progress made towards national and international commitments taken by countries;

1. Indicator-based assessments

• a series of indicator-based assessments (“fact sheets”), providing an analysis of core issues across the Region;

1. Country information

• country information for the 53 Member States of the WHO European Region;

1. Policy overview

• an overview of policies on core issues, at both national and international level, and topic-based comparative policy assessments across 18 countries;

1. Methodological guidance

• methodological guidance on the core set of indicators, to facilitate harmonization and dissemination of methods used within ENHIS and validated by international experts;
• guidance and examples of health impact assessments, showing the potential health benefits of policy actions and interventions aimed at reducing exposure to environmental risk factors.

Useful links

• Project website: www.enhis.org