In 2016, a study in the European Journal of Public Health catalogued at least 150 public health observatories worldwide, and that their main functions were reporting on health, performing data analysis, and supporting evidence-based decision-making.
[3] Environmental health, diet, recreation, outdoor education, exercise and other concerns are explored by some public health observatories.
[citation needed] The term observatoire is used in French (and has been since at least 1976[4]) to denote any institution that compiles and presents data on a particular subject or for a particular area, generally established so that local or regional policymakers can make decisions with access to interpreted data appropriate to the scope of their geographical area.
[5] A survey in 1999 recorded that there were over 500 different observatories at the local, regional, and national levels, focusing on a variety of topics.
There are currently operating health observatories in Wales and Scotland; there was at some point one in Ireland.