International collaboration on health and welfare information

The Institute collaborates with a number of international agencies to improve the quality of health and welfare information.

World Health Organization

The World Health Organization (WHO) [external link] and its Collaborating Centres for the Family of International Classifications are committed to the development and implementation of high quality health and related classifications to assist international comparability and to provide a strong base for health statistics in member states. The AIHW is the WHO Collaborating Centre for the Family of International Classifications in Australia. Key areas of work of the Australian Centre are:

• The Director, as head of centre, is the chair of the WHO-FIC Planning Committee (PC) and the WHO-FIC Family Development Committee (FDC). The Australian Collaborating Centre also provides the secretariat for the FDC.
• Coordination of a work program for the implementation of the International Involvement in the WHO-FIC Implementation, Education, Update Reference and Electronic Tools committees.
• Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) [external link] in Australia.
• Development and support of countries in the Western Pacific Region in their implementation of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems - Tenth Revision (ICD-10) [external link]
• Create, maintain, publish and distribute the Australian Modification of the ICD-10 (ICD-10-AM) [external link] classification under licence from the WHO.
• Involvement in the development and maintenance of the International Classification of External Causes of Injury (ICECI).
• Involvement in the development and maintenance of the International Classification of Primary Care, Second Edition (ICPC-2).
• A repository for data provided to WHO
• WHO Health Systems Performance Assessment Framework

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [external link] Health Database is the most comprehensive source of comparable statistics on health and health systems across industrialised countries. The database contains information on health status, health care services and health care spending for member countries. The AIHW maintains the Australian section of OECD Health Data.

OECD announcements:

OECD Health Data 2009 released (1 July 2009)

Health at a Glance: OECD Indicators 2007 released (13 November 2007).

The United Nations Statistics Division

The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) [external link] coordinates a number of informal groups of experts, primarily from national statistical agencies, known as City Groups. Each City group focuses on a particular statistical area of interest. The AIHW contributes to the work of the following City Groups.

• Washington Group for Disability Statistics [external link]
  The Group concentrates on a comprehensive approach to measuring disability. The focus is on a question (or small set of questions that could be used in a population census, and that should be consistent with more detailed screening and questioning in population surveys.
   
• Siena Group for Social Statistics [external link]
  The aim of the Siena Group is "to promote and coordinate international co-operation in all areas of social statistics by focusing on social indicators, social accounting, social reporting, concepts and classifications and on analysis of the linkages and frameworks for integrating social, economic and ecological data for the purposes of policy formulation, analysis and monitoring.
   
• Rio Group for Poverty Statistics [external link]
  The Group's work is concentrated on the production of a compendium of best practice for the measurement of poverty. The compendium will include chapters on the measurement of absolute, relative and subjective poverty, access to basic services, inequality and deprivation, child poverty, international comparisons and strategies for the improvement of information. The Institute is predominantly advising on strategies to collect and interpret data from programs and policies aimed at alleviating poverty.