Belgian companies, mutualities and employment services should be more proactive in helping people with mental health problems stay in the workplace or find a job, according to a new OECD report.

Increasingly complex and inconsistent clinical trial regulations are causing delays, raising costs and leading to a decline in the number of international trials conducted by academics for non-commerical purposes.

The main purpose of this meeting is to shortly present where the Mental Health and Work project stands and to discuss some good practice examples from the first countries that have been reviewed.

An overview of OECD work on Employment, Social Protection and International Migration.

The future of public health: policy decisions today for tomorrow’s populations. Our health, our economy, our society, our future: a Brave New World. Remarks by Yves Leterme, Deputy Secretary-General, OECD. Brussels, Belgium, September 4th 2013.

To help inform the Conference on Managing Hospital Volumes, co-organised by the German Federal Ministry of Health and the OECD, and held on the 11th April 2013 in Berlin, the OECD Secretariat produced a paper to provide an international perspective on Germany’s situation and the current policy debate.

Earlier detection and better treatment for cancer would cut death rates from the disease by around a third, saving the lives of nearly a million people in the developed world every year, according to a new report by the OECD prepared with the support of the European Commission, building on earlier World Health Organisation research.

The global economic crisis has had a profound impact on people’s well-being, reaching far beyond the loss of jobs and income, and affecting citizens’ satisfaction with their lives and their trust in governments, according to a new OECD report.

Total health spending has fallen in one of three OECD countries between 2009 and 2011, with those hardest hit by the crisis most affected. This is a sharp reversal from the strong growth in the years prior to the crisis, according to a new OECD report.

Mexico needs serious investment in prevention programmes to address its massive, and still rising, obesity rate, according to a new OECD report.

This report examines examples of new and emerging governance models to support responsible development of diagnostics and treatments based on the latest advances in biomedicine. It identifies some of the main challenges for policy makers, regulators and other communities involved in the translation of biomedical innovation and health technologies from the lab bench to point of care.

Switzerland needs to do more to help people with mental disorders find a job or stay in work, according to a new OECD report.

Mental health issues cost the UK around GBP 70 billion every year, or roughly 4.5% of GDP, in lost productivity at work, benefit payments and health care expenditure.

More than 35 million people worldwide had dementia in 2010 and this number is expected to exceed 115 million by 2050. This paper reports on the opportunities offered by the informatics revolution and big data to address Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia. This will require careful planning and multi-stakeholder collaboration as technical, administrative, regulatory, infrastructure and financial obstacles emerge.

Synthetic biology is an emerging technology that shows promise for investigating some of the burning issues in biological research. It also has the potential to address some of the grand challenges facing society, such as climate change and energy security.

The pricing of specialist and hospital services is a contentious issue in South Africa. To help inform domestic debates, the OECD Secretariat has produced a paper profiling international experiences on the pricing of specialist medical services services, competition policy and models of buying services from the private sector.

Governments need to step up their efforts to improve mental health care which remains poorly resourced and under-prioritised in too many countries, according to a new OECD report.

Health care use varies widely across countries but can also vary as much or more within countries. Governments should do more to improve their health systems to prevent unnecessary interventions and ensure that everyone has the same access to quality healthcare, wherever they live, according to a new OECD report.

Elderly individuals with complex, chronic diseases need continuous and tailored care to maintain their health and maximise their ability to participate in society. Japan must change the way it delivers health services for older citizens by strengthening its specialist primary care and making mental health care services more widely available, according to a new OECD report.

Improving labour market participation of people with mental health problems requires well-integrated policies and services across the education, employment, health and social sectors. This paper provides examples of policy initiatives from 10 OECD countries for integrated services.

The Netherlands should increase support for workers suffering from mental health issues and their employers and tackle the continued social stigma and limited knowledge around such illnesses, according to a new OECD report.

Health and employment services should intervene earlier, involve key stakeholders and ensure they work together in order to help people with mental-health issues find work and stay in a job, according to a new OECD report.

Dementia is increasing in prevalence, and to date has no cure or treatment. One element in improving this situation is using and sharing data more widely to increase the power of research. Further, moving beyond established medical data into big data offers the potential to tap into routinely collected data from both within and outside the health system.

The current policy approach to tackling dementia is socially and economically unsustainable, according to a new OECD report. Countries need to take action now to improve the lives of people living with dementia and their carers, prioritise public research on dementia, and improve the incentives for private investment in dementia innovation.

There’s a quiet revolution afoot: health data are increasingly collected, stored and used in digital form.

Harmful drinking is on the rise among young people and women in many OECD countries, partly due to alcohol becoming more available, more affordable and more effectively advertised, according to a new OECD report.

Austria needs to do more to help people with mental health problems find a job or stay in the workplace, according to a new OECD report. A more comprehensive approach would help employees and firms alike: mental health issues are estimated to cost the Austrian economy around 3.6% of GDP every year in lost productivity, health care and out-of-work benefits.

Health Data Governance: Strong health data governance frameworks are needed

Too many lives are still lost in OECD countries because healthcare quality is improving too slowly to cope with ageing populations and the growing number of people with one or more chronic diseases, according to a new OECD report.

The recent mental health reform is an important step towards better services for people with mental ill-health, but Australia needs to do more to help people with mild to moderate mental health issues at and into work, according to a new OECD report.

In the ten years since the introduction of Seguro Popular, some 50 million Mexicans previously at risk of unaffordable health care bills now have access to health insurance. The OECD Review of Health Systems: Mexico 2016 finds that the share of the population exposed to unaffordable or impoverishing health care costs has fallen from 3.3% to 0.8% of the population in the past decade.

Although many health indicators are improving in Mexico, the country has the lowest life expectancy in the OECD. This is due to unhealthy lifestyles with higher risk factors to health leading to chronic diseases and mortality, but also to persisting barriers of access to high-quality health care services.

“Mental health issues exact a high price on individuals, their families, employers and the economy,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, “Policymakers have been too slow to act. Strong political leadership is needed to drive reform and tackle this issue.”

The G7 Health Ministers meeting in Kobe on 11-12 September welcomed OECD work on the linkages between Universal Health Coverage and healthy ageing, and recognised OECD work on access to innovative health treatments. The OECD will deliver initial findings following the French-led initiative to identify innovative options to pay for new medicines and high-cost treatments at the 17 January 2016 OECD Health Ministers meeting.

Asia-Pacific countries should strengthen their health systems and sharply increase spending to deliver effective universal coverage in order to meet the changing needs of their fast ageing populations, according to a new OECD report.

OECD Health Ministers meeting in Paris have underlined their commitment to tackling important challenges facing health systems around the world. E.g. improving the delivery of high-quality care for all; addressing how to pay for effective health technologies; measuring health system performance on the basis of what it delivers to people, as well as making better use of health data; and making health systems more people-centred.

Read about our groundbreaking report on inequality - In it Together: Why less inequality benefits all - as well as our recent work on tackling harmful alcohol use. You can also find here all our work on employment, migration, health and social policy over the last few months, as well as highlights from this summer's OECD Forum which addressed the theme "Investing in the future: people, planet, prosperity”.

There is now strong evidence that microbiomes play an important role in human health, as there are clear linkages to many major non-communicable diseases. This report assesses the key policy challenges for innovation in the microbiome. It argues that if such a promising scientific field is to lead to innovative applications, policies on science and innovation must be improved in five areas.

Mental disorders represent a considerable disease burden, and have a significant impact on the lives of the OECD population, and account for considerable direct and indirect costs. This report argues that even in those OECD countries with a long history of deinstitutionalisation, there is still a long way to go to make community-based mental health care that achieves good outcomes for people with severe mental illness a reality.

Evaluation and assessment policies are key in Australia’s national school reform agenda. The Australian approach combines the development of goals, monitoring and reporting at national level with local evaluation and assessment practices shaped by jurisdiction-level school improvement frameworks

This case study describes the policy-making process in Australia leading to the public release of information on every school in Australia through the My School website. Policy lessons are described to provide insight for OECD member countries which may be grappling with similar issues.

Australia’s labour market continues to perform well in comparison with other major developed countries. The unemployment rate, at 5.1% in May 2012, is among the lowest in the OECD.

Skills and educational development for inclusive and sustainable growth are becoming significant drivers in OECD countries.

The global economic crisis has had a profound impact on people’s well-being, reaching far beyond the loss of jobs and income, and affecting citizens’ satisfaction with their lives and their trust in governments, according to a new OECD report.

These country notes contain indicators which compare the political and institutional frameworks of national governments as well as revenues and expenditures, employment, and compensation. They include a description of government policies on integrity, e-government and open government.

Slower growth in key markets like China and India is reducing momentum across the Australian economy, cutting into employment opportunities and putting more pressure on the government to ensure that public policy delivers optimal results for growth and job creation.

Mr. Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the OECD, was in Sydney from 21 to 23 February 2014 to attend the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meetings. While in Sydney, the Secretary-General launched the 2014 OECD Going for Growth report, alongside Mr. Joseph Benedict "Joe" Hockey, Treasurer of Australia.

The ability to measure innovation is essential to an improvement strategy in education. This country note analyses how the practices are changing within classrooms and educational organisations and how teachers develop and use their pedagogical resources.

Global Value Chains (GVCs) are a dominant feature of the world economy that impact growth, jobs and development, but numerous challenges remain to ensure that all countries and all firms have the opportunity to participate and benefit.

Since the start of the crisis, a growing number of OECD countries have been reporting declining inward and outward FDI, a phenomenon that could be described as ‘investment de-globalisation’. Governments must take immediate and vigorous action to reverse such trends by removing unnecessary barriers and complexities that hinder investment, said OECD Secretary-General.