Pöördumine

Dear colleagues at the Ministry of Social Affairs of Estonia,

I hope this message finds you well. We are reaching out to you for the topic mentioned in subject. We have contacted the Department of Health Statistics of Estonia and they have referred to you being the owner of the data we are interested in.

My name is Elisa Dominguez and I work at WHO in Geneva HQ in the Nutrition and Food Safety Dpt. I am part of the Joint Malnutrition Estimates (JME) group which is currently preparing a new round to report on SDG 2.2.1 (child stunting) and 2.2.2 (child wasting and overweight) in 2027, being WHO a co-custodian agency, jointly with UNICEF for these indicators. WHO is also custodian for SDG 2.2.3 on anemia in women of reproductive age.

For this work, we use input data mainly from national surveys but we are also starting considering administrative data from health routine systems which include anthropometry in children under 5 years. In this framework, we have identified that Estonia has a fully digital governance within the national health information system and therefore we think that electronic individual-level data of anthropometry in children under 5 might be available. We think these data could be highly relevant to our work on child growth and nutrition. Currently we only have one data point for Estonia in the recently updated in 2025 JME database ( corresponding to the National Dietary Survey among children up to ten years old and breastfeeding mothers in Estonia. EFSA supporting publication 2017:EN-1199. 25 pp.doi:10.2903/sp.efsa.2017.EN-1199).

I am writing to kindly request access to the microdata of anthropometry in children gathered in the Growth Monitoring services in Estonia Primary Health Care, if they are available. These datasets would be extremely valuable for ourcomparative analyses and to support ongoing efforts in monitoring child anthropometry globally.

If there are any formal procedures or data access agreements required, please let us know how best to proceed. We are also available for a virtual meeting if you need more details about our work.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Warm regards,
Elisa

Dr Elisa M. Dominguez Muriel

Technical officer|Department of Nutrition and Food Safety

World Health Organization |20 Avenue Appia | CH1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland

email: [email protected]

website: https://platform.who.int/nutrition/nutrition-portals

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