General objective:

This Joint Action will support the national activities needed to build the capacity for organizing Health Examination Surveys (HES) in 14 countries. The Partners will work in collaboration with the European Health Examination Survey Reference Centre (EHES RC) funded by a separate Tender. The aim is to plan and prepare for a full-scale HES in the 14 countries, and to pilot the fieldwork, data collection, assessment and reporting. The full-size HESs will provide comparable information on major chronic disease risk factors and disease prevalence.

Specific objectives:

1. To prepare national HES plans for the Partners of the Joint Action.
2. To prepare detailed sampling description for the piloting countries.
3. To complete the national HES pilot field work.
4. To transfer pilot survey data from Partner countries to the EHES RC and assessment of the data.
5. To share the national experience among the Partners.
6. To plan the reporting of the national results of the full-size HES, and report the results of the national pilot HES.

This Joint Action will test and evaluate the applicability of the recommendations prepared by the Feasibility of a European Health Examination Survey (FEHES) project in different cultures and health care systems. When needed, the recommendations will be adapted to achieve better compatibility with different cultures and national circumstances. This is a key step towards a sustainable system of standardized surveys in Europe. HES results can be used to evaluate the need for health services and health promotion, to identify major target groups and adapt the activities to meet their specific needs and in the long term also to follow trends. If the response is not selective and when the surveys are well standardized, clinical measurements allow better comparability of data between socio-economic groups and between countries than other information sources. HES data can also be utilized to inform the public about health determinants and how they are affected by personal choices.

This Joint Action will cover the Partners` national activities, which will be supported with the coordination, training and expert consultation provided by the EHES RC. Together the Joint Action and the EHES RC will use common internet facilities for dissemination and sharing information between Partners. The Partners will plan and prepare a full-size HES, select a random sample, targeting for 200 participants in each country, conduct a field work pilot and transfer their pilot data to the EHES RC. The Partners will provide information for the basic external quality assessment and evaluate the quality assessment reports prepared by the EHES RC. The Partners will also produce local dissemination plans and prepare reports of the pilot results.

At the end of the Joint Action, the detailed plans and the necessary preparations are in place so that the full-size national HESs to be carried out in the Partners`countries can produce high quality comparable data on key health indicators. The Partners will be ready to start the field work of the full-size HES in their countries after the pilots have been evaluated. This full-size HES can be a new survey, a HES component added to an established Health Interview Surveys (HIS), or an established national HES adapted to European Health Examination Survey (EHES) standards. Focusing first on a core set of measurements in the adult population will help to build a basic structure which can later be expanded to other countries and to cover other health topics in periodically repeated surveys.