In English

The Child Health Services in Sweden

Child health services (CHS or BHV in Swedish) is a free-of-charge and nationwide system of healthcare and 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 contribute to children’s physical, psychological, and social health by promoting health and development, preventing illness, detecting emerging problems early. Therefore, the Child Health Services registry (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 health care sector, the child health care is often separated from other actors inside the health care 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, as well as targeted interventions that enable equitable provision of services. The CHS offers activities at CHS centers 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 want to use data from the register there must always be an 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 register representative on 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 Swedish Well-Child Register the responsible unit for CPUA is 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 personal identification number (PIN) for linkingdata 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 are listed and a selection of variables are 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 register representative the applicant also accepts the following costs of requesting the dataset