The European Chronic Disease Alliance (ECDA), the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) and the Non-communicable Disease Alliance (NCD) have developed the paper “Towards an EU-Strategic Framework for the prevention of Non-communicable Diseases”. The document stresses the need for a comprehensive strategic framework against the chronic diseases epidemic in Europe, based on preventative measures and actions. It is an important call towards the European Union coming from public health advocates to revive the 2012 momentum towards an EU Strategy for Chronic Diseases that was afterwards forgotten.
Strategic priorities for the EU on NCDs
The document sets several strategic priorities and key actions to enable such an NCD framework. These include:
- Rolling-out of prevention policies recommended by the World Health Organisation;
- A renewed and strengthened commitment to Health-in-All-Policies, demonstrated through an online policy portal;
- EU high-level coordination mandate, such as a European Commission vice-president, that will ensure inter- and intra-institutional policy coordination for health and well-being;
- Designing EU financial instruments that support national investment in prevention;
- Identifying EU barriers to the implementation of national NCD prevention strategies
These proposals are aligned with the objectives of the EU4Health campaign, a public mobilisation aiming at increasing EU commitment to public health in the next European Commission to start late 2019. EFA is active contributor to the EU4Health campaign, as a joint effort preserving greater integration of health considerations in the EU policies and structures.
The Joint paper from ECDA-EPHA-NCD can be found here.