Health Inequality Monitor
Explore health inequality monitoring evidence, tools, resources and training
Health Inequality Data Repository: API Instructions
The Health Inequality Data Repository (HIDR) contains datasets of disaggregated data covering diverse topics and dimensions of inequality from various publicly available data sources. The Application Programming Interface (API) offers users a systematic way to access and download the data in the HIDR. An API call is the process of submitting a request to an API, and that API retrieving the requested data. The HIDR can either be queried using an OData API or entire datasets can be downloaded using Swagger (OpenAPI).
Citation
API users should add the following citation to any application, website, tool, or document that receives data from the Health Inequality Data Repository API:
The Health Inequality Data Repository API. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2025. Available from https://www.who.int/data/inequality-monitor/data. [Accessed DD-MM-YYYY]
OData API
OData (Open Data Protocol) can be used to query the data in the Health Inequality Data Repository. The base OData feed URL is https://frontdoor-r5quteqglawbs.azurefd.net/HEM/ and specific dataset URLs are available in the OData feed URLs reference document above. More information about OData can be found here.
Swagger API
The open-source ecosystem Swagger hosts the HIDR OpenAPI. Further details about the API’s offered functions and queries can be found in the Swagger HTML index.
Query structure
The basic structure of queries comprises the base path and the specific call (detailed in the endpoint path). Software such as R or Stata can download the data using this basic structure. Code samples in R and Stata are available here:
Base path: All queries have the base path https://datasafe-h5afbhf4gwctabaa.z01.azurefd.net/api/download/TOP
Endpoint path: The endpoint includes the dataset ID and the specific call. Dataset IDs are located in the Dataset IDs reference table (see link above). The call "data" requests the data (.xlsx) file.
Example
This API downloads the latest data file for the dataset ID 'rep_sdg' (the Sustainable Development Goal dataset):
https://datasafe-h5afbhf4gwctabaa.z01.azurefd.net/api/download/TOP/rep_sdg/data