The Danish National Child Health Register

Abstract

Aim of the Database

The aim of the National Child Health Registry is to provide comprehensive insight into children’s health and growth on a national scale by continuously monitoring the health status of Danish children. Through this effort, the registry assists the health authorities in prioritizing preventive efforts to promote better child health outcomes.

Study Population

The registry includes all Danish children, however, incomplete coverage persists.

Main Variables

The National Child Health Registry contains information on exposure to secondhand smoking, breastfeeding duration, and anthropometric measurements through childhood. The information in the registry is divided into three datasets: Smoking, Breastfeeding, and Measurements. Beside specific information on the three topics, all datasets include information on CPR-number, date of birth, sex, municipality, and region of residence.

Database Status

The National Child Health Registry was established in 2009 and contains health information on children from all Danish municipalities, collected through routinely performed health examinations conducted by general practitioners and health nurses.

Conclusion

The National Child Health Register is an asset to epidemiological and health research with nationwide information on children’s health and growth in Denmark. Due to the unique Danish Civil Registration System, it is possible to link data from the National Child Health Register to information from several other national health and social registers which enables longitudinal unambiguous follow-up.

Keywords:

• child health
• children‘s database
• register-based research
• Danish register
• epidemiology

Ethics

This type of study does not require ethical approval or informed consent as stated in The Danish Data Protection Act in that the study is conducted for the sole purpose of statistics and scientific research. However, approval to use the data and conduct the study was granted by the data responsible institute in the Capital Region of Denmark (approval number P-2019-280) in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Disclosure

Prof. Dr. Christian Torp-Pedersen reports grants from Bayer, grants from Novo Nordisk, outside the submitted work. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work.