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. 2022 Aug 1;32(4):571-577.
doi: 10.1093/eurpub/ckac043.

Health surveillance indicators for diet and physical activity: what is available in European data sets for policy evaluation?

Isobel Stanley  1 , Agnieszka Neumann-Podczaska  2 , Katarzyna Wieczorowska-Tobis  2 , Gert B M Mensink  3 , Lina Garnica Rosas  3 , Stefanie Do  4 , Karim Abu Omar  5 , Catherine Woods  6 , Wolfgang Ahrens  4   7 , Antje Hebestreit  4 , Celine Murrin  1 ; PEN Consortium
Affiliations

Health surveillance indicators for diet and physical activity: what is available in European data sets for policy evaluation?

Isobel Stanley et al. Eur J Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: Policies targeting diet and physical activity have the potential to improve health and well-being at a population level. However, the impact of these policies in Europe is currently unknown. Based on existing data, as well as on a needs assessment, we derived a catalogue of indicators that can be employed to evaluate such policies. These indicators may also inform the further development and harmonization of surveillance systems.

Methods: Forty EU experts agreed on a list of key indicators and ranked their priority for future surveillance. We mapped these indicators onto variables provided by ongoing European surveillance systems. Using a Likert scale (well matched, somewhat matched, poorly matched, unmatched), we assessed the suitability of these variables as measures for the indicators.

Results: Key indicators included behaviour outcome indicators relating to diet (n = 72) and physical activity and sedentary behaviour (n = 67) as well as upstream determinants of these behaviours. It was possible to map 72% of diet indicators and 86% of physical activity and sedentary behaviour indicators onto at least one variable in an ongoing surveillance system.

Conclusions: Current monitoring and surveillance systems focus mainly on measuring 'downstream' indicators, while gaps exist in policy and environmental level data in dimensions such as inequality, funding and resources and governance.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The process used to map key indicators for diet, physical activity and sedentary behaviour to ongoing pan-European monitoring systems
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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