Data Brief 1: Introduction and Population

Background

CircHOB is an international, open access, collaborative health information system, involved in systematic, standardized, and consistent data collection and analysis. It is population-based, and covers all northern regions in all circumpolar countries. CircHOB’s purpose is to monitor trends and patterns in health status, health determinants, and health care, and provide an on- going and sustainable knowledge base and analytical support for researchers, statisticians, health care providers, public health practitioners and policy makers. CircHOB also serves as a resource for training and research in population health and health systems and enhances partnerships and collaborations among health and statistical agencies in circumpolar countries and regions.

CircHOB extends and updates the data tables, charts and maps originally published in Circumpolar Health Indicators as a Circumpolar Health Supplement, the sister publication of the Journal. Currently, its website provides access to the 2000-2004 datasets and associated thematic mapping tools based on UNESCO’s Flash-based StatPlanet software. The datasets are currently being updated to 2009 and will also be presented for download and interactive visualization. Reference materials and statistical reports related to the data are also being catalogued for a fully searchable online document database.

CircHOB is hosted at the Institute for Circumpolar Health Research data center [www.ichr.ca]. ICHR research affiliates and staff are responsible for database development and maintenance, data retrieval, analysis, and presentation.

Geographical coverage

The northern regions covered by CircHOB are shown in Figure 1 and the key to the 2-letter country and region codes are listed in Table I.

 

The whole of Alaska and Greenland are included in CircHOB. Northern Canada includes only the three northern territories, all located above 60º N latitude. The northernmost counties in Norway, Sweden, and Finland constitute the northern regions of those countries. [“County” here refers to fylke in Norway, län in Sweden, and lääni in Finland]. Note that in 2010, Finland abolished the lääni and replaced it with the aluehallintovirasto or AVI, translated as regional state administrative agency. For the northern regions of Oulu [now called Pohjois-Suomi] and Lappi, there is little boundary change.

The situation in Russia is quite complex. The Russian Federation is composed of different types of administrative divisions called federal “subjects” (subyetkty), including republic, kray, oblast, autonomous okrug, and federal city, with varying degrees of autonomy. An autonomous okrug (AO), with the exception of Chukotka, is generally part of some higher level units such as an oblast or kray, and usually represents the traditional territory of some indigenous ethnic group. Demographic and health data are usually available for these AO separately. Note that as of January 1, 2007, the Taymyr, Evenki and Koryak AO ceased to exist as distinct federal subjects, and were fully absorbed into the Krasnoyarsk kray and Kamchatka kray, although some statistics continue to be produced for these former AOs.

Population

In assessing the health of a population, accurate enumeration of the population is needed to provide the denominator for the rates and proportions which constitute many health indicators. CircHOB provides the mean or mid-year population and its age-sex distri- bution aggregated in 5-year age-groups (0-4, 5-9, etc). Other population-related indicators are also included, such as population density (Fig.1), the proportion of indigenous peoples in the population, and the population of selected cities. In health indicators such as age-specific mortality rates, both the numer- ator (number of deaths) and denominator (size of population) are derived from the same geographical region. Since many regions have small populations, it will frequently be neces- sary to combine multiple years of event data. It should be noted that population counts are being used as a proxy for person-years at risk, which is the real denominator for incidence rates. That also makes the calculation of confidence intervals more straightforward (compared to the alternative of thinking of rates for a multiple year period as an average of annual rates).

Sources of data and limitations

There are two sources of information on population – the census and population registry. Both are in use in the circumpolar countries. All data presented in CircHOB are retrieved from websites in the public domain which serve as a portal to public access data, supplemented by special requests to the relevant agencies to fill specific data gaps, especially for subnational and regional data.

The Nordic countries have well established population registries, which are continuously updated, and thus capable of generating the precise population of the country and its regions at a point in time, such as the beginning of the year (January 1, as in the case of Denmark, Greenland, Faroe Islands, and Norway), or at year end (Dec 31, as in the case of Finland, Iceland and Sweden). Where mean population is not published, it can be obtained by averaging the Jan 1 or Dec 31 populations of two successive years. Decennial population and housing censuses are also conducted in Norway and Finland (but discontinued in other Nordic countries), primarily to obtain information about living conditions and other characteristics of the population. Iceland plans to reinstate the census in 2011. Other countries rely on special-purpose sample surveys.

Canada, United States and Russia rely on periodic censuses. Canadian censuses are conducted every 5 years in the years ending in “1” and “6”. In the United States, a census is conducted once every 10 years in the year ending in “0”. Russian censuses are irregular – the last Soviet census was completed in 1989, and the first post-Soviet census in 2002. A new census is scheduled for October 2010. In the “intercensal” years, these jurisdictions produce annual estimates of the population, taking into account data on births, deaths, and migrations. It is these annual estimates (for all years including census years) that are presented in CircHOB. They are preferable to the raw census counts as denominators.

Population data are available from the following websites:

Country/Region	Agency	Website
Canada	Statistics Canada	www.statcan.ca
Denmark	Danmarks Statistik Statbank	www.statbank.dk
Faroe Islands	Hagstova Føroya	www.hagstova.fo
Finland	Tilastokeskus	www.stat.fi/tup/tilastotietokannat
Greenland	Grønlands Statistik / Kalaallit Nunaanni Naatsorsueqqissaartarfik	www.stat.gl
Iceland	Hagstofa Íslands	www.statice.is
Norway	Statistisk sentralbyra	www.ssb.no
Russia	Federal’naia sluzba gosydarstvennoi statistiki	www.gks.ru
Sweden	Statistika centralbyrån	www.ssd.scb.se
United States	Centers for Disease Control and Prevention	wonder.cdc.gov

Patterns and trends

The population density (expressed as number of persons per km²) shown in Fig 1., varies from 0.02 in Nunavut to 35 in the Faroe Islands. Table 1 shows the trend in mean population from 1990 to 2009. There has been little change in the mean population of Greenland and the northern regions of the Nordic countries, whereas Alaska, northern Canada and Iceland witnessed substantial growth. Of particular note is the depopulation of many northern Russian regions, with some losing more than half its population in 20 years. In only two regions – Yamalo-Nenets AO and Khanty-Mansi AO – which experienced large scale oil and gas development, did the population increase.

While indigenous people are a population of special interest, not all circumpolar regions provide statistical data that can be disaggregated by ethnicity. A future data brief will discuss the problems associated with enumerating circumpolar indigenous people.

Concluding remarks

CircHOB is a new open access online resource designed to serve the needs of researchers, statisticians, health care providers, public health practitioners, and policy makers in all circumpolar countries. The Data Brief series will present different health indicators, inform readers of data availability, highlight methodological issues and summarize changes and new developments at the Observatory. While this first Data Brief focuses on population data, future changes will be noted on the website or through any of the affiliated subscription-based social media tools (RSS Feeds, Facebook, Twitter). Feedback from users is essential for the continuous improvement and sustainability of CircHOB. A monitored wiki mechanism is also being developed and will be used to provide a regulated mechanism for feedback, keep the site contents current, and enhance data quality. Readers are encouraged to visit the site and provide feedback specific to the population data or other comments.

Acknowledgments

CircHOB received developmental funding from Health Canada through a grant to the Institute for Circumpolar Health Research, and from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research through the team grant on circumpolar health research awarded to Kue Young (CTP 79853).

Code	Country/Region	1990	2000	2009	% change 2009/1990
US	United States	249, 622, 814	282, 171, 957	307, 006, 550	23
Ak	Alaska	553, 290	627, 499	698, 473	26.2
CA	Canada	27, 697, 530	30, 685, 730	33, 739, 859	21.8
Yk	Yukon	27, 774	30, 431	33, 653	21.2
Nt	Northwest Territories	37, 330	40, 480	43, 439	16.4
Nu	Nunavut	21, 580	27, 498	32, 183	49.1
	Northern Canada	86, 684	98, 409	109, 275	26.1
DK	Denmark	5, 140, 939	5, 337, 344	5, 519, 441	7.4
Gl	Greenland	55, 589	56, 176	56, 323	1.3
Fo	Faroe Islands	47, 559	45, 749	48, 676	2.3
IS	Iceland	254, 788	281, 154	319, 246	25.3
NO	Norway	4, 241, 473	4, 490, 967	4, 828, 726	13.8
Nd	Nordland	239, 468	238, 702	235, 826	-1.5
Tr	Troms	146, 705	151, 469	156, 024	6.4
Fm	Finnmark	74, 369	74, 073	72, 674	-2.3
	Northern Norway	460, 542	464, 244	464, 523	0.9
SE	Sweden	8, 558, 835	8, 872, 110	9, 298, 515	8.6
Vb	Västerbotten	251, 054	256, 177	258, 180	2.8
Nb	Norrbotten	263, 289	257, 168	249, 348	-5.3
	Northern Sweden	514, 343	513, 345	507, 528	-1.3
FI	Finland	4, 986, 431	5, 176, 209	5, 338, 871	7.1
Ou	Oulu	442, 004	457, 573	473, 543	7.1
La	Lappi	200, 324	193, 060	183, 856	-8.2
	Northern Finland	642, 328	650, 633	657, 399	2.3
RU	Russian Federation	147, 969, 414	146, 596, 870	141, 915, 638	-4.1
Mu	Murmansk Oblast	1, 190, 127	931, 969	839, 413	-29.5
Ka	Kareliya Republic	791, 589	732, 138	685, 889	-13.4
Ar	Arkhangelsk Oblast	1, 572, 231	1, 379, 726	1, 258, 422	-20
Ne	Nenets AO	51, 830	41, 053	42, 184	-18.6
Ko	Komi Republic	1, 244, 388	1, 050, 377	954, 807	-23.3
Yn	Yamalo-Nenets AO	488, 869	497, 282	544, 911	11.5
Km	Khanty-Mansi AO	1, 273, 585	1, 371, 548	1, 529, 213	20.1
Tm	Taymyr AO	51, 316	38, 257	36, 852	-28.2
Ev	Evenki AO	24, 148	18, 241	16, 391	-32.1
Sk	Sakha Republic	1, 115, 232	959, 993	949, 630	-14.8
Ma	Magadan Oblast	387, 401	197, 960	162, 097	-58.2
Ky	Koryak AO	37, 666	26, 238	20, 724	-45
Ck	Chukotka AO	160, 096	59, 574	49, 046	-69.4
	Northern Russia	8, 336, 644	7, 263, 303	7, 047, 392	-15.5
	Total Northern Regions	10, 951, 766	10, 000, 512	9, 908, 834	-9.5