Monitoring health inequalities to support policy-makers in Belgium

Abstract Belgium has significant experience in developing dashboards to support policy-makers in monitoring public health, e.g. in the context of the Belgian national Burden of Disease study. Over the years, we have refined methodologies and tools to track health outcomes, making complex data more accessible for decision-making. However, while these dashboards have been valuable, they have largely focused on overall health indicators without explicitly addressing health inequalities. Given the persistent and significant disparities in health outcomes, it is essential to go beyond general trends and provide policymakers with clear, actionable insights on health inequalities. This will also support policymakers in Belgium with the current development of health objectives. To address this need, we are developing new dashboards specifically designed to monitor health inequalities in Belgium. These dashboards integrate key health outcomes-such as mortality, causes of death, and life expectancy-while assessing disparities based on educational level and the Belgian Index of Multiple Deprivation, alongside stratifications by age, sex, and region. Various inequality measures, including rate differences, rate ratios, and the population attributable fractions (PAF), help quantify and interpret disparities. Different visualisations are used to make information more accessible, and users can download graphs and data for easier reuse. Building such a dashboard presents unique challenges, particularly in ensuring that the information remains understandable and useful for policy-makers. In this workshop, we will share our experiences, lessons learned, and ongoing challenges in this process. We invite participants to discuss best practices and strategies for effectively leveraging data visualisation tools to support policy actions aimed at reducing health inequalities.