In English

The Child Health Services in Sweden

Child health services (CHS) is a free-of-charge and nationwide healthcare system that reaches almost every child in Sweden. The CHS has a high credibility in the Swedish community, and over 99% of all children in Sweden attend regular visits at the CHS-clinics during their first 6 years. The CHS aims to promote children’s physical, psychological, and social health by promoting health and development, preventing illness, and detecting emerging problems early. Therefore, the Child Health Services Register (BHVQ) was created to follow and improve quality at the clinics. Because of this follow-up, it became possible for the registry to also follow the health status among young children in some parameters.

The Child Health Records

In the Swedish healthcare sector, child healthcare is often separated from other actors inside the healthcare system. The health record at the child health services is well structured at all health care providers in Sweden, but the lack of a national standard for data structure makes the registry useful for national studies and follow-ups. BHVQ provides the possibility of combining different systems for health records into one database for some variables from the national program for child health care.

The national program for child health care is well established and most of the program is offered for all children under the age of 6 in Sweden. The national program is based on universal interventions, an important cornerstone of the CHS, and targeted interventions that enable equitable provision of services. The CHS offers activities at CHS centres and via home visits, health guidance, health examinations, vaccinations, and parental support. More information about the child health services in Sweden is available here: Swedish Child health services - Rikshandboken i barnhälsovård (rikshandboken-bhv.se)

For Researchers

For a research project that wants to use data from the register, there must always be approval from an ethics review board. The application for requesting data from the register must include a complete plan for the study and a copy of the approval from the ethics review board. The application should be submitted directly to the registered representative at this email address: registerhallare@bhvq.se

The procedure of approval of the request of data from the register follows an established routine of the central personal data responsibility (CPUA) authority. For the BHVQ, the responsible unit for CPUA is Region Jönköping with support from the Centre of Registers Southeast Sweden (RCSO) in Sydöstra sjukvårdsregionen.

Data that the register provides directly to the applicant is delivered pseudonymised or anonymized according to current legislation. Data can be provided with a personal identification number (PIN) for linking data from BHVQ to other registers or national registers. In that case the register provides the requested data to the authority that is responsible for the linkage, in most cases the linkage is done by Statistics Sweden (SCB) or the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen).

In this variable list (in Swedish), the total data set of variables is listed, and a selection of variables is visualized in a Power BI report on the BHVQ’s statistikportal

Registerbeskrivning och informationsspecifikation - Svenska Barnhälsovårdsregistret (bhvq.se)

Costs: For every approved request, the register takes a fee for the time consumed when completing the request. The cost varies in the complexity of the requested dataset. When the application is sent to the registered representative, the applicant also accepts the following costs of requesting the data.