A new 5-year strategy, website, and brand for EuroHealthNet

Today we are launching our new Strategic Development Plan, which sets out the principles and priorities which will guide our work over the next five years, as well as a new website and brand.

EuroHealthNet’s strategy 2021-2026

Over the last two years, EuroHealthNet members – over 60 organisations, institutes, and authorities working on public health, disease prevention, promoting health and wellbeing, and reducing inequalities – have assessed how the Partnership should move forward. It is clear that new skills, capacities, and competencies will be needed and are crucial. This is the case within National Institutes of Public Health, for wider public health workforces, and for the wider public. Our new Strategic Development Plan, published today, describes how our Partnership can continue working together to achieve real and lasting change to improve health and reduce health inequalities in Europe.

We will focus on:

• The application of the equity lens across health and other policies and measures; supporting the ‘economy of wellbeing’, as well as a ‘whole of society’ approach.
• Novel ways to promote health and prevent diseases. Making solutions attractive and sustainable, whilst contributing to the transformation of health and social protection systems.
• The social, economic, environmental, cultural, commercial, behavioural, and political determinants of health, which allows us to be agile and responsive to the diverse threats to health equity.

We have defined five priority areas:

• Health equity. Our core themes and ‘raison d’être’ are health inequalities and the social determinants of health. Topics include health and social justice, employment, education, social inclusion, discrimination, gender and racial inequities.
• Non-communicable diseases. We will also work closely on the prevention of NCDs and cancer, addressing obesogenic environments, healthy and sustainable food and diet, physical activity and sedentary behaviour, risk factors such as tobacco and alcohol, and impacts of social marketing and the commercial determinants of health.
• The climate crisis. We will take forward sustainable development and mitigating environmental degradation including climate change, loss of biodiversity, air pollution, and green spaces, and seek opportunities to work on environmental health, healthy urban planning and transport, and nature-based solutions.
• Prevention and promotion. We will continue to advocate for the
  shift towards prevention, health promotion and people-centred community care, including strengthened primary health care, and integration with local social services.
• Life course. The Partnership will further work on themes such as inter-generational inequalities, children and young people’s health and opportunities, demographic change including healthy and active ageing, working conditions and ‘work-life balance’.

And two cross-cutting themes:

• Mental health as part of our definition of health
• Digital inclusion as technological developments will shape all areas of our work

The Strategic Development Plan sets out how we will build on our strong foundations and meet the challenges of tomorrow. The right to quality health care, health promotion, and disease prevention, as part of the European Pillar of Social Rights, is crucial to allow Europe and its peoples to thrive. Together, we will build the capacities of public bodies to deliver those rights.

– Caroline Costongs, EuroHealthNet Director