The European Commission's Health Monitoring Programme culminated in the development of a set of European Community Health Indicators (ECHI) for the general population. Despite evidence of marked disparities between the health of people with intellectual disabilities (ID) and their peers in the general population, the ECHI contain no significant reference to people with ID. To address this deficit, a two-year grant from the Health Monitoring Programme was awarded to the "Pomona" project (a collection of researchers from 13 European countries). The project comprised exchanges of expertise; a critical review of published evidence about health and ID; and consultative processes in member states. The project's finding was that there was no systematic monitoring of the health of people with ID in EU member states and, as a consequence, a set of health indicators specific to people with ID was proposed that could lead to such systemic monitoring.