March 2016 Euro-Peristat Newsletter

The Euro-Peristat network brings together perinatal health professionals from 31 European countries to compile and to analyse data on 30 perinatal health indicators from national routine data systems.

Our purpose is to provide information for national, European and international stakeholders who make decisions about the health and care of pregnant women and newborns.

Our mission, indicators and network are described here.

We are pleased to announce Croatia as a new participating member country. We welcome Croatian team members:

• Urelija Rodin, MD, PhD, Assist. Prof., specialist in public health working at the National Institute of Public Health and the School of Public Health “Andrija Štampar” in Zagreb 
• Boris Filipović-Grčić, MD, PhD, Prof. of Pediatrics, a neonatologist working at Clinical Hospital Center Zagreb, School of Medicine University of Zagreb.

They recently published on key perinatal indicators in Croatia and give us more insight into characteristics of the Croatian perinatal health surveillance system here.

Marked social inequalities in stillbirth exist in Europe.
Monitoring these should be a priority.  
See article

Mortality has declined, but not equally across Europe.
These declines also raise the question: how low can perinatal mortality go?   
See article

Broader adoption of data linkage  could yield substantial gains for perinatal health research and surveillance.
See article

The Lancet Series calls for collective action to end preventable stillbirths and to improve bereavement care for families who experience a stillbirth.

We contributed to the Series by analyzing data on socioeconomic inequalities in stillbirths.

What are the implications of this call?
read more here