Press Release, Statistician’s Association, Department of Statistics, Malaysia

International Year of Statistics PRAISES CONTRIBUTIONS OF STATISTICIANS TO IMPROVING WORLD HEALTH

Statistics2013 participants join celebration of World Health Day 2013

Putrajaya, 7 APRIL 2013—In recognition of World Health Day, the Statistician’s Association, Department of Statistics Malaysia and the more than 1,850 organizations in 122 countries participating in the International Year of Statistics (Statistics2013) are spotlighting the contributions of statisticians to improving world health.

Observed each year on April 7, World Health Daycelebrates the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organization (WHO) on the same date in 1948 by the United Nations. WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for world health within the United Nations system.

Each year a theme is selected for World Health Day that highlights a priority area of public health concern around the world. The theme for this year is high blood pressure.

Statistics2013 is a worldwide initiative that is highlighting the contributions of the statistical sciences to finding solutions to global challenges, including the well-being of the world’s population. Statistician’s Association, Department of Statistics Malaysia is a Statistics2013 participating organization.

Statisticians contribute to providing more and better information for a spectrum of health care decision-makers—from you and your family, to government, hospitals and even your doctor.

For example, statisticians are vital to all forms of health care research—from developing treatments to examining regimes for preventing and detecting diseases. They also collaborate with health-care researchers to extract information from data. This new health-care information leads to the development and adoption of new treatments and information that can help save lives.

On the public-policy side, statisticians analyze and interpret data that empowers government policy-makers to make decisions about the most effective and efficient treatments, caregivers, health care systems, and health care policies.For instance, statistical methods are used extensively by individual country governments around the world to monitor the health of their citizens. The work of statisticians highlight key health trends and the health status of the population, including important sub-populations such as the elderly and children, and track key indicators of health to identify emerging health problems and epidemics.

“Statistics and the world’s statisticians play an integral role in our global health care system, especially in the areas of developing new medical treatments, discovering new drugs, providing critical early notice of epidemics and informing health policy decisions by government leaders here in Malaysia and around the world,” says Dr. Mohd Uzir Mahidin.  “Statistical sciences and its professionals—statisticians—have played a role in crucial and leading role in health research and policy-making. This work has contributed greatly to a general improvement ofthe health of the world’s citizens. However, much work remains to be done and that’s why statisticians will be working along health providers, researchers, drug manufactures and government leaders to make the health system better for everyone.”

In honor of World Health Day and the thousands of health care professionals around the globe who are working tirelessly to improve public health, the International Year of Statistics will feature on its website (www.statistics2013.org) several special itemsthat highlight the important contributions of statisticians to world health initiatives. These items as well as the World Health Day logo will be featured starting Friday (April 5) and through the weekend:

·         A Blog postabout the contributions of statistics to advancing world health written by Marleen De Smedt, who is an advisor to the director-general of the European Commission, Eurostat

·         A Statistician Job of the Week articleabout Center for Disease Control and Prevention statistician Emily Olsen

·         A Statistic of the Day focused on the theme of World Health Day 2013: high blood pressure

·         An insightfulQuote of the Dayrelated to world health

·         A Statisticians in the News article that talks about how University of Louisville researchers are using statistics to improve health

·         A biostatistics article from Significance magazine

The goals of Statistics2013 are to increase public understanding of the power and impact of statistics on all aspects of society, including health, and to nurture statistics as a profession among high-school and college students. Participants include national and international professional societies, universities, schools, businesses, government agencies and research institutes. These groups are educating millions of people about the contributions of the statistical sciences through seminars, workshops and outreach to the media.

The founding organizations of Statistics2013 are theAmerican Statistical Association, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, International Biometric Society, International Statistical Institute(and the Bernoulli Society), and Royal Statistical Society.

About Association’s Statistician, Department of Statistics Malaysia.

For additional information, please contact our spoke persons:

Mr. Liang Hung Shan or Ms. Kanageswary a/p Ramasamy

Office: 03-8885 7414 or  03-8947 9114

E-mail: lianghs@stats.gov.my or kanageswary@stats.gov.my