Comparison of countries in European region according to risk factors of noncommunicable diseases by APLOCO method

Aim: The aim of the study was to compare countries in the WHO European Region according to key risk factors of NCDs. Materials and Methods: Target population of study consists of 37 European Region countries. Weights of key risk factors were determined by Shannon Entropy and NMV weighting methods. APLOCO, one of the MCDM methods, was used to evaluate countries according to decision criteria. Results: There is a significant and very strong positive monotonic relationship between score rankings obtained from NMV-based APLOCO and Shannon Entropy-based APLOCO methods. According to both the NMV-based and Shannon Entropy-based APLOCO methods, 14 European countries have above-average while 23 have below-average scores. Conclusion: NCD risk factors are more prevalent in countries of the European Region with below-average NCD prevalence. NCDs may increase in countries of this region due to high risk factor prevalence.