Sustainable development and public health: rating European countries

BMC Public Health

Milan Martic⁵  Biljana Kilibarda⁴  Jovanka Vukmirovic²  Veljko Jeremic⁵  Natasa Petrovic³  Kristina Seke¹ 

[1] Communication Centre, Institute of Public Health of Serbia “Dr Milan Jovanovic Batut”, dr Subotica, 5, Belgrade, Serbia;Department for Marketing Research, Belgrade Business School, Kraljice Marije, 73, Belgrade, Serbia;Department for Ecology, Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade, Jove Ilica, 154, Belgrade, Serbia;Centre for Health Promotion, Institute of Public Health of Serbia “Dr Milan Jovanovic Batut”, dr Subotica, 5, Belgrade, Serbia;Department for Operations Research and Statistics, Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade, Jove Ilica, 154, Belgrade, Serbia

关键词: Rating countries;    I-distance method;    Sustainable development;    Public health;   

Others  :  1162602
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-13-77

 received in 2012-10-31, accepted in 2013-01-23,  发布年份 2013

【 摘 要 】

Background

Sustainable development and public health quite strongly correlate, being connected and conditioned by one another. This paper therein attempts to offer a representation of Europe’s current situation of sustainable development in the area of public health.

Methods

A dataset on sustainable development in the area of public health consisting of 31 European countries (formally proposed by the European Union Commission and EUROSTAT) has been used in this paper in order to evaluate said issue for the countries listed thereof. A statistical method which synthesizes several indicators into one quantitative indicator has also been utilized. Furthermore, the applied method offers the possibility to obtain an optimal set of variables for future studies of the problem, as well as for the possible development of indicators.

Results

According to the results obtained, Norway and Iceland are the two foremost European countries regarding sustainable development in the area of public health, whereas Romania, Lithuania, and Latvia, some of the European Union’s newest Member States, rank lowest. The results also demonstrate that the most significant variables (more than 80%) in rating countries are found to be “healthy life years at birth, females” (r² = 0.880), “healthy life years at birth, males” (r² = 0.864), “death rate due to chronic diseases, males” (r² = 0.850), and “healthy life years, 65, females” (r² = 0.844).

Conclusions

Based on the results of this paper, public health represents a precondition for sustainable development, which should be continuously invested in and improved.

After the assessment of the dataset, proposed by EUROSTAT in order to evaluate progress towards the agreed goals of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS), this paper offers an improved set of variables, which it is hoped, may initiate further studies concerning this problem.

【 授权许可】

   
2013 Seke et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

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