Sustainable development and public health: rating European countries

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Biljana Kilibarda¹  Kristina Seke²  Natasa Petrovic³  Jovanka Vukmirovic⁴  Veljko Jeremic⁵  Milan Martic⁵ 

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

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

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-13-77

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

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundSustainable 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.MethodsA 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.ResultsAccording 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).ConclusionsBased 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】

CC BY   
© Seke et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013