Is there the gap in public health literature in Europe?

The growing expectations for the effectiveness of public health increase the demand for scientific literature, concerning research, reviews and other forms of information. The bibliographic databases are of crucial importance for researchers and policy makers. The objective of this study is to estimate the supply of scientific literature related to public health in selected European countries, which are available to a wide range of users.

Analysis of the number of bibliographic records on topics related to public health was based on searches in Ovid MEDLINE (R) in May and June 2011. According to MeSH terms, 11 keywords and names of 13 European countries were used in the search. Publications from the years 2001-2010 were analyzed. A number of publications indexed under 'public health', and related to selected countries were compared with the size of the population of those countries, GDP, total expenditure on health and burden of disease (DALYS's).

The most popular topic was 'health policy', whereas the topics 'occupational health' and 'environmental health' were less prevalent. There were no significant changes in the number of publications in 2001-2010. The number of articles indexed under 'public health' had significant positive correlation with national GDP, expenditure on health and population size, and negative with DALY's.

According to the criteria accepted in this study, the Nordic countries--Finland, Sweden and Norway--were very productive in this respect. Poland and other Central European Countries were less productive.