ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: The Minimum European Health Module (MEHM) consists of 3 global questions concerning 3 health domains: self-perceived health, chronic conditions and long-term activity limitation. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the reliability of the MEHM. METHODS: Participants of the Belgian Food Consumption Survey were interviewed twice: 170 individuals were selected for the MEHM reliability evaluation. For each of the 3 questions Pearson and Kappa coefficients were estimated. Analyses were stratified by gender, age, education, language and time between the interviews. RESULTS: The Pearson correlations are between 0.73 and 0.81. The Kappa estimates are good or excellent: 0.74 (self-perceived health), 0.77 (chronic conditions) and 0.68 (activity limitation). Also stratified analyses indicated in general an acceptable reliability. CONCLUSION: The MEHM has an acceptable reliability.
Subject(s)
Attitude to Health , Chronic Disease/epidemiology , Disability Evaluation , Health Status Indicators , Adolescent , Adult , Aged , Belgium , Europe , Female , Health Surveys , Humans , Interviews as Topic , Male , Middle Aged , Reproducibility of Results , Young AdultABSTRACT
Daily numbers of deaths at a regional level were collected in 16 European countries. Summer mortality was analyzed for the reference period 1998-2002 and for 2003. More than 70,000 additional deaths occurred in Europe during the summer 2003. Major distortions occurred in the age distribution of the deaths, but no harvesting effect was observed in the months following August 2003. Global warming constitutes a new health threat in an aged Europe that may be difficult to detect at the country level, depending on its size. Centralizing the count of daily deaths on an operational geographical scale constitutes a priority for Public Health in Europe.
