Australians continue to enjoy one of the highest levels of health across the developed world but need to address Australia’s growing obesity problem, according to a new OECD report.

Mexico needs serious investment in prevention programmes to address its massive, and still rising, obesity rate, according to a new OECD report.

Switzerland needs to do more to help people with mental disorders find a job or stay in work, according to a new OECD report.

An ageing population brings new challenges both to healthcare systems and to medicine in terms of the increased manifestation of specific diseases primarily seen in the elderly. Biomedical innovation, and in particular research into "omics technologies", offers the promise of new means of detection, prevention and treatment of age-related disabilities and diseases.

More than 35 million people worldwide had dementia in 2010 and this number is expected to exceed 115 million by 2050. This paper reports on the opportunities offered by the informatics revolution and big data to address Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia. This will require careful planning and multi-stakeholder collaboration as technical, administrative, regulatory, infrastructure and financial obstacles emerge.

Air pollution is costing advanced economies plus China and India an estimated USD 3.5 trillion a year in premature deaths and ill health and the costs will rise without government action to limit vehicle emissions, a new OECD report says.

Most people in OECD countries are overweight or obese. The social and economic consequences of this epidemic are dramatic, exposing an increasing number of people to chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Synthetic biology is an emerging technology that shows promise for investigating some of the burning issues in biological research. It also has the potential to address some of the grand challenges facing society, such as climate change and energy security.

The pricing of specialist and hospital services is a contentious issue in South Africa. To help inform domestic debates, the OECD Secretariat has produced a paper profiling international experiences on the pricing of specialist medical services services, competition policy and models of buying services from the private sector.

Strengthening primary health care and prevention programmes would help stem the growing tide of diabetes and other chronic health conditions in the Czech Republic, according to a new OECD report.

Health spending has started to rise again after stagnating or even falling in many OECD countries during the crisis. But the pace of growth remains well below pre-crisis rates, especially in Europe, according to OECD Health Statistics 2014.

Today, Europeans enjoy a much longer life expectancy than the previous generation, but large inequalities in health remain across and within countries. These are largely due to disparities in access to and quality of care, as well as individual lifestyles and behaviours, according to a new joint OECD/European Commission report.

Dementia is increasing in prevalence, and to date has no cure or treatment. One element in improving this situation is using and sharing data more widely to increase the power of research. Further, moving beyond established medical data into big data offers the potential to tap into routinely collected data from both within and outside the health system.

Rising levels of obesity and diabetes around the world could halt a trend of decreasing mortality rates for cardiovascular diseases, such as strokes and heart attacks, and even cause rates to start rising again, particularly among younger people, according to a new OECD report.

Specific country notes have been prepared using data from the database OECD Health Statistics 2015, July 2015 version. The notes are available in PDF format.

Too many lives are still lost in OECD countries because healthcare quality is improving too slowly to cope with ageing populations and the growing number of people with one or more chronic diseases, according to a new OECD report.

Australia should improve the integration of care across the patient pathway to prepare for a rise in chronic disease and make the health system less complex for patients, according to a new OECD report.

The recent mental health reform is an important step towards better services for people with mental ill-health, but Australia needs to do more to help people with mild to moderate mental health issues at and into work, according to a new OECD report.

Urgent research is needed to assess the possible risks to human health and ecosystems from the ever-increasing amounts of engineered nanomaterials going into household waste and ending up in the environment, according to a new OECD report.

Israel has built a universal health system at relatively low-cost. Health spending was 7.5% of GDP in 2013, below the OECD average of 8.9% although the health spending share of GDP has been increasing rapidly, particularly in recent years. Israel has developed a sophisticated programme to monitor quality of primary care.

At the OECD, we have calculated that about 50% of all the antimicrobials prescribed by healthcare facilities in our member countries do not meet prescription guidelines. In healthcare services such as long-term care facilities and general practices up to 70% and 90% respectively of antibiotics may be prescribed for inappropriate reasons.

On 16-17 January 2017, the OECD will host a meeting for Ministers of Health and a High-Level Policy Forum on person-centred care, at the OECD Headquarters in Paris.

Responses from the third wave of the OECD Health System Characteristics Survey are available online, providing access to the most recent information on key institutional characteristics of health systems of OECD countries and key partner and accession countries.

The G7 Health Ministers meeting in Kobe on 11-12 September welcomed OECD work on the linkages between Universal Health Coverage and healthy ageing, and recognised OECD work on access to innovative health treatments. The OECD will deliver initial findings following the French-led initiative to identify innovative options to pay for new medicines and high-cost treatments at the 17 January 2016 OECD Health Ministers meeting.

Better public health and prevention policies as well as more effective health care could save hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of euros each year in Europe, according to a new joint OECD/European Commission report.

The proliferation of high-cost medicines and rising drug prices are increasing pressures on public health spending and calling into question the pharmaceutical industry’s pricing strategies.

OECD Health Ministers meeting in Paris have underlined their commitment to tackling important challenges facing health systems around the world. E.g. improving the delivery of high-quality care for all; addressing how to pay for effective health technologies; measuring health system performance on the basis of what it delivers to people, as well as making better use of health data; and making health systems more people-centred.

OECD Health Statistics 2017 is the most comprehensive source of comparable statistics on health and health systems across OECD countries. All datasets have been updated on 10 November 2017, including the datasets for Pharmaceutical Market and Health Care Quality Indicators.

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing health and economic threat requiring multipronged responses. The OECD provides a forum for discussion and provide countries with the evidence to implement effective and cost-effective policies to tackle AMR, promote effective use of antimicrobials and incentivise research and development in the antibiotic sector.

This document revises the OECD's statistical definition of biotechnology, which had last been reviewed in 2008, and proposes the adoption of a statistical definition of nanotechnology in the same format.

Korea tops a new OECD PISA survey that tests how 15-year olds use computers and the Internet to learn. The next best performers were New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Hong-Kong China and Iceland.

This country note provides information on latest trends in income inequalities as well as key findings from the 2011 OECD report "Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising".

The Australian economy is robust and faces a solid short-term outlook, but it must continue adapting to ensure that its privileged place in the Asia-Pacific region contributes to long-term sustainable growth, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Survey of Australia.

Carbon taxes and emission trading systems are the most cost-effective means of reducing CO2 emissions, and should be at the centre of government efforts to tackle climate change,according to a new OECD study.

The global economic crisis has had a profound impact on people’s well-being, reaching far beyond the loss of jobs and income, and affecting citizens’ satisfaction with their lives and their trust in governments, according to a new OECD report.

Australians continue to enjoy one of the highest levels of health across the developed world but need to address Australia’s growing obesity problem, according to a new OECD report.

Mr. Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the OECD, was in Sydney from 21 to 23 February 2014 to attend the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meetings. While in Sydney, the Secretary-General launched the 2014 OECD Going for Growth report, alongside Mr. Joseph Benedict "Joe" Hockey, Treasurer of Australia.

Country notes highlight some key findings from TALIS 2013 for individual countries and economies

PISA 2012 financial literacy results focusing on the performance of Australia amongst 17 other countries and economies who participated in the assessment: Belgium (Flemish Community), Shanghai-China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Israel, Italy, Latvia, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain and the United States.

Mr. Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the OECD, will be in Sydney from 17 to 20 July 2014 to attend the G20 Trade Ministers Meeting.

The G20 needs to go structural, social, and green! With fiscal and monetary policy room nearly exhausted, structural reforms are the best choices, sometimes the only choice. The OECD battle cry in this regard has been unchanged since 2008: “go structural!”.

Mr. Angel Gurría was in Brisbane to attend the G20 Leaders' Summit on 15-16 November. Prior to the Summit, the Secretary-General attended a G20 Finance Ministers Meeting, as well as L20 and B20 meetings.

Australia has been successful at reducing the mortality due to cardiovascular diseases. The mortality from cardiovascular diseases (CVD) has decreased over the past 50 years at a faster pace than the OECD average, reaching 208 per 100 000 population, 30% lower than the OECD average of 299 in 2011.

Specific country notes have been prepared using data from the database OECD Health Statistics 2015, July 2015 version. The notes are available in PDF format.

Australia should improve the integration of care across the patient pathway to prepare for a rise in chronic disease and make the health system less complex for patients, according to a new OECD report.

The OECD welcomes Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s announcement at COP21 that Australia intends to ratify the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period, which sets mitigation targets and reporting requirements for 2013-2020.

The recent mental health reform is an important step towards better services for people with mental ill-health, but Australia needs to do more to help people with mild to moderate mental health issues at and into work, according to a new OECD report.

This country note presents student performance in science, reading and mathematics, and measures equity in education in Australia. The interactive charts allow you to compare results with other countries participating in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

How can we build a global economy driven by innovation when half the population is missing out on the action? The short answer is, we can’t.

The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (the Global Forum) published today the first 10 outcomes of a new and enhanced peer review process aimed at assessing compliance with international standards for the exchange of information on request between tax authorities.