Reliable information on the environment, population health and their linkages is essential to best prioritize, develop and evaluate policies and actions to reduce hazardous environmental exposures and their effects on health.

A harmonized pan-European system provides timely, targeted and reliable information to support the policy process, enabling Member States to make comparisons and facilitating communication with multiple user groups.

WHO/Europe has made substantial progress in combining dispersed results, experiences and analyses into a comprehensive and practical framework through a series of projects, implemented in collaboration with several Member States, the European Commission DG SANCO and the European Environment Agency. 

Parallel to the technical advances, WHO/Europe has launched a process together with its Member States and international organizations to achieve common objectives on the development of a pan-European environment and health information system.

Based on a set of environmental health indicators and using health impact assessment methods, the system integrates the following elements: