DEMOGRAPHICS AND SOCIAL FACTORS OF UNMET HEALTH CARE NEEDS AND AVOIDABLE MORTALITY IN EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES

Abstract

Quality health care is an important factor of health status and mortality in each country. The aim of EU cohesion policy is to reduce health care disparities among EU countries. The importance of good health of the population, functioning health systems, and quality health care now has been significantly strengthened in the context of the global Covid-19 pandemic. The main aim of this article is to assess inequalities in unmet healthcare needs and in treatable and preventable mortality in EU-27 countries for different groups of inhabitants by gender, age, education, and income amount. Graphical methods of descriptive statistics and methods of multidimensional comparison using synthetic variable have been used based on the most up-to-date available data for 2018 and 2019 year. In the future, it will certainly be interesting to compare the results obtained in this article with the results of analogous analyses based on data from the pandemic and the post-pandemic period caused by COVID-19 disease.