The Major Public Health Associations Express Concern About European Health and Health Research

The main public health associations in Europe (IEA, ISEE, and EUPHA) have released a joint statement on the health research programme 2014-2015  proposed by the European Commission (Horizon2020), a proposal which, in their opinion, "does not address adequately major public health problems of the European population" and "underestimates the importance of health systems and policy research".

One area of concern is the absence of priorities on research directed towards identifying the effects of the current economic crisis on populations and health systems or on research into interventions that might alleviate the effects of the crisis. The statement notes that the word "crisis" appears only once in the proposal—a document of more than 50 pages—and then only in the introduction to justify the focus on personalizing health.

Dr Manolis Kogevinas, Chair of ISEE-Europe and co-Director of CREAL, one of the centres in the ISGlobal alliance, explains that they are calling for "a major revision of the work programme that will effectively focus health-related research in Europe on the major determinants of health and disease in the European population". He goes on to make the point that "the major problems in Europe are the ageing of the population, an increasing communicable and non communicable disease burden and the fallout from the economic crisis. Together, these factors are jeopardising the sustainability and equity of European health and care systems".

ISGlobal also stresses the need to include global health in the European Community's Horizon2020 programme in order to ensure the continuity of the lines of research aimed at the reduction of inequities in health and health care between European populations and those of low-income countries.

The International Epidemiological Association (IEA), the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) and the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) are the major epidemiology and public health scientific associations in Europe and represent thousands of health professionals.

Read the joint statement of the public health associations of Europe (IEA, ISEE, EUPHA) here