Health determinants

health determinants and the provision of high quality and sustainable health care services and pension systems (in particular in the context of ageing and demographic change);

Health determinants can be categorised as personal behaviour and lifestyles, influences within communities which can sustain or damage health, living and working conditions and access to health services and general socioeconomic, cultural and environmental conditions.

European Commission Directorate-General Health and Consumer Protection Unit C4 - Health Determinants E-mail:

Under the health determinants strand, the Programme is supporting pan-European projects aimed at promoting healthy nutrition habits and physical activity, including cross cutting and integrative approaches which foster the integration of approaches on lifestyles, integrate environmental and socio-economic considerations, focus on key target groups and key settings and link work on different health determinants fn.

As announced in the Communication ` Healthier, safer, more confident citizens, a Health and Consumer Strategy` fn, the Commission is preparing a series of Community strategies to tackle the most important health determinants, including nutrition and obesity.

In Conclusions of the Council of Europe in the domain of healthy lifestyle, education, information and communication (OJ EU, 2004/C 22/01), it has been established that an important part of the programme of social activities in the domain of public health (2003-2008) is health promotion and prevention of diseases with the emphasis on health determinants.

support to national programmes for nutrition and physical activity, identification of programmes whose efficacy has already been manifest in individual countries, studies of lifestyle or of health determinants, and setting up the European information system.

health determinants:

A basic framework of statistics on public health, covering health status, health determinants and health resources has been established within the European Statistical System in support of the Community action programmes on public health.

Activities on health determinants

activities on health determinants;

environmental health determinants;

health information, health threats and health determinants.

health status including lifestyle and other health determinants;

Environmental health determinants (Article 3(2)(b), Annex, point 3.1)

Effective work on health determinants calls for a variety of approaches.

lifestyle and other health determinants (including sexual and reproductive health aspects);

to promote health and prevent disease through addressing health determinants across all policies and activities.

To promote health and prevent disease through action on health determinants across all Community policies and activities by:

Tackling major health determinants is of great potential for reducing the burden of disease and promoting the health of the general population.

socioeconomic determinants of health;

A proactive use of other Community policies, such as structural funds and social policy could influence health determinants in a positive way.

For example, work on health information and knowledge should support proper planning and targeting of rapid reaction activities, and actions to tackle health determinants.

Work on environmental health determinants will take account of the European health and environment strategy as set out in the Commission's communication of 11 June 2003(34).

These should cover in particular policy areas with a clear link to key health determinants, such as agriculture and nutrition, taxation and trade.

analysing the situation and developing strategies on social and economic health determinants, in order to identify and combat inequalities in health and to assess the impact of social and economic factors on health;

An important task of the programme would be to identify better the main burdens of disease in the Community and, in particular, the main health determinants.

Finally, life cycle approaches - and in particular the problems related to the ageing population - will be taken into account when addressing health determinants.

analysing the situation and developing strategies on health determinants related to the environment and contributing to the identification and assessment of the health consequences of environmental factors;

It will concentrate exclusively on integrating genomic approaches through all relevant organisms into more established medical approaches for investigating disease and health determinants.

In addition to the specific actions launched in this area (as outlined in under 2.3.9 below), addressing these factors will be considered in all actions aimed at tackling lifestyle-related health determinants.

In its Resolution of 29 June 2000 on the follow-up to the Evora conference on health determinants, the Council considered that the increasing differences in health status and health outcomes between and within Member States called for renewed and coordinated efforts at national and Community level;

Socioeconomic determinants of health (Article 3(2)(b), Annex, point 3.2)

In order to combat the social and health problems caused by alcohol, one of the key health determinants in the Community, advertising practices should be addressed by assessing the enforcement of national laws and self-regulation on the advertising and marketing of alcoholic beverages in the Member States.

welcomed the Commission's commitment to submit a proposal for a new public health programme containing a specific strand of action aimed at addressing health determinants by means of health promotion and disease prevention underpinned by intersectoral policy and agreed that there was a need to develop the appropriate knowledge base for this and, therefore, that an efficacious health monitoring system should be established for this purpose;

preparing and implementing strategies and measures, including those related to public awareness, on life-style related health determinants, such as nutrition, physical activity, tobacco, alcohol, drugs and other substances and on mental health, including measures to take in all Community policies and age- and gender-specific strategies;

developing and operating a sustainable health monitoring system to establish comparable quantitative and qualitative indicators at Community level on the basis of existing work and of accomplished results, and to collect, analyse and disseminate comparable and compatible age- and gender-specific information on human health at Community level concerning health status, health policies and health determinants, including demography, geography and socioeconomic situations, personal and biological factors, health behaviours such as substance abuse, nutrition, physical activity, sexual behaviour, and living, working and environmental conditions, paying special attention to inequalities in health;

However, the wider determinants of health are best tackled by policy initiatives on a more general level.

A comprehensive legislative programme is part of the Commission's overall strategy to tackle smoking as a key health determinant.

exploring the molecular and cellular determinants of healthy ageing including their interactions with environmental, behavioural and gender factors.

The Council in its Conclusions of 26 November 1998 on the future framework for Community action in the field of public health(17), and in its Resolution of 8 June 1999(18), the Economic and Social Committee, in its opinion of 9 September 1998(19), the Committee of the Regions, in its Opinion of 19 November 1998(20), and the European Parliament, in its Resolution A4-0082/99 of 12 March 1999(21), welcomed the Commission communication of 15 April 1998 and supported the view that actions at Community level should be set out in one overall programme to run for a period of at least five years and comprising three general objectives, namely improving information for the development of public health, reacting rapidly to health threats and tackling health determinants through health promotion and disease prevention, underpinned by inter-sectoral action and the use of all appropriate Treaty instruments.

identifying effective strategies to address inequalities in health and the health impact of socioeconomic determinants in specific settings and for population groups which are particularly affected, in particular in socially excluded, minority and migrant populations;

First, to encourage and support the development of actions and networks for gathering, providing and exchanging information in order to assess and develop Community policies, strategies and measures, with the purpose of establishing effective interventions aimed at tackling the determinants of health.

stressed the importance of the new Community public health strategy building upon the activities on specific determinants taken in the existing programmes, especially with respect to tobacco, nutrition and alcohol and that it was important not only to ensure continuity with existing actions, but also to take forward work on these issues in a fully coherent and systematic way.