Healthy Finland survey as the latest uptake for 50 years of population health monitoring in Finland

Abstract

Abstract In Finland, population-based health examination surveys (HESs) have been conducted in regularly since early 1960's to obtain information on population health and health determinants. These surveys have covered adult population living in the mainland Finland. Surveys have always been conducted by specially trained personnel using international standardized protocols such as WHO MONICA protocol or EHES protocol. The latest HES, Healthy Finland, is ongoing and will run until June 2023. The Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) had the responsibility of the coordination of the preparation phase as well as conducting the survey. Survey planning was started already in early 2021 with a multidisciplinary group including representatives from different stakeholders. Survey sample includes 66.000 randomly selected adults aged 18+ years living in Finland. In the 1st phase, they receive a questionnaire to be filled in. Questionnaire covers topics such as quality of life, health, use of health care services, lifestyles, background information, work ability and functional capacity, wellbeing, accidents, and sexual and reproductive health. In the 2nd phase, 10.000 of those selected to the survey were invited to health examination including for example anthropometric measurements, blood pressure, spirometry test, collection of biological samples and sub-studies. This from these national HESs has been widely used for policy making, planning and evaluation of the prevention programmes, as epidemiological background for clinical treatment guidelines of several diseases, and for research. Information obtained from the Healthy Finland survey will be used for the evaluation of wellbeing service counties which are responsible for the organization of social and health care services in Finland. Survey will generate new information about health inequalities by providing information not only by age and sex but also by education and other socio-economic indicators.