The Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) Health Data Needs for Research and Policy sub-group is a vital programme aimed at identifying the health data needed for research and policy, and achieving a comprehensive system with health data from many countries, updated on a daily basis, which can be easily retrieved by queries. Examples of such queries: Age specific and sex specific mortality rates from a specific disease; distribution of infectious diseases by age and sex.
The data needs should be well identified and defined.
Some major lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic pointed out in papers published by ASPHER were: the need to promote timely, well-resourced and comprehensive epidemiological reporting systems; the need to expand active surveillance such as environmental monitoring, like wastewater testing for polio and coronaviruses, due to lack of high-resolution data, disaggregated by age, sex, and other demographics and area; there is a critical need for increased transparency and timely data sharing between nations. A standardised approach to data collection and dissemination, supported by interoperable technologies is essential for accurate epidemiological profiling and swift responses. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted deficiencies in global health surveillance networks, underscoring the need for improved health data exchange.
These lessons should be translated into actions. This sub-group within ASPHER Public Health Emergency Task force will map the required steps for achieving these goals and step toward implementing them.