European Public Health Alliance: How to put health at the heart of the Europe2020 Strategy
Ahead of the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs (EPSCO) Council on 1 December, EPHA has sent an open letter to health ministers urging them to ensure that the mid-term revision of the Europe 2020 Strategy places a high value on health. EPHA also asks ministers to focus on Europe’s social commitments in their upcoming discussions of the 2015 Annual Growth Survey (AGS).
In its letter, EPHA recommends that:
- The social and employment implications of policies undertaken as part of the Strategy should be routinely assessed using social impact assessment, health impact assessment, and the social scoreboard. The Strategy must go beyond gross domestic product (GDP) if it is to achieve its social aims.
- Policies seeking to address macroeconomic imbalances often conflict with the social goals of the Strategy – reducing expenditure by cutting the salaries of health professionals, for example, has threatened the provision of quality care in many member states. A coherent mechanism for identifying and addressing these kinds of conflicts must be adopted and alternative implementation options should be explored – for instance, the efficiency gains of health promotion, disease prevention programmes and community-based care could be examined in more depth.
- The Strategy should be adjusted to ensure the full and effective participation of all stakeholders. This includes European and national parliaments, the Economic Policy Committee (EPC) and the Social Protection Committee (SPC), social partners and civil society, as well as joint leadership between the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) and EPSCO Councils with the full involvement of DG SANCO. A positive first step would be to draft guidelines for working with civil society and establish joint meetings between the EPSCO and ECOFIN Councils.
- The Strategy must be coherently and effectively linked to other policy areas, such as the WHO Global Code of Practice regarding health personnel, the Strategy on Nutrition, Overweight and Obesity, the Alcohol Strategy, the HIV/AIDS Strategy and the overarching Health Strategy. It should also ensure connections between health policies and policy in outside areas which affects health, such as industrial policy, the common agriculture policy and budgetary decisions. Such linkage might be facilitated by the creation of a joint Council configuration and Parliament Committee, and more comprehensive use of the health impact assessment, to monitor coherence with other policy goals.
