The National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ) is the central Slovenian institution for public health practice, research and education. Its academic staff work on various tasks covering the areas of epidemiology of communicable and non-communicable diseases, health promotion, health protection, health system research and national coordination of preventive programmes in primary health care. It also functions as the central statistical authority in health. Although public health practice is not in the exclusive domain of a single type of organisation or profession, in Slovenia as in many other countries, the majority of important public health functions and services are provided by NIJZ.
The main function of NIJZ is to provide research in the field of health, protect and increase the level of health of the population by raising the awareness of population and carrying out other preventive measures. NIJZ's main activities are funded by the Ministry of Health and include national health statistics and research in the field of public health including health care systems; activities to identify health threats and design measures for their control; designing and providing health promotion programmes and preparing a scientific background for health-friendly policies, programmes and measures for disease prevention.
NIJZ is a public institute. Following legislation changes brought about by the Slovenian Health Services Act in 2013, the previous institution (also named the National Institute of Public Health) underwent organizational restructuring. From 2014 onward, NIJZ is organized as one central unit with nine regional offices, employing over 400 staff members.
NIJZ has successfully coordinated and participated in various international projects. NIJZ has also taken on the role of lead partner in three prominent EU-funded Joint Actions: EPAAC – European Partnership for Action Against Cancer, PARENT – Cross-border Patients’ Registries Initiative and CANCON – Development of a European Guide on Quality Improvement in Comprehensive Cancer Control.
NIJZ is engaged in numerous activities covering the areas of epidemiology, health promotion, statistics, and national coordination of preventive health programmes. Thus, NIJZ provides significant support in CrowdHEALTH by facilitating the pertinent information for an integrated view of the patient, including all health determinants. What is more, as a manager of numerous national health-related databases, NIJZ facilitates health care data sets in order to provide dynamic exploitation of data sources. Moreover, through the innovative approaches gradually establishing within the eHealth projects, NIJZ supports the development of proactive personalized care services across the complete health ecosystem. At the same time, NIJZ engages in wide-ranging dissemination of the CrowdHEALTH’s results and knowledge gained in the project implementation process. Inclusive engagement and promotion of lessons learnt will ensure better national and transnational transferability and applicability of CrowdHEALTH’s results, and other outputs generated by the project partners.