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);

Socio-economic health factors have an important impact on these medical conditions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Deficiency diseases and conditions are malnutrition, anaemia, thyroid enlargement, hypovitaminosis etc. These diseases are largely a result of unhealthy nutritional habits due to a (conscious) neglect of healthy diet recommendations (some alternative diets), due to medical conditions that influence insufficient intake of food or utilization of a nutrient or significantly increased need for some nutrients (sick people, children, elderly people), due to lack of sufficient quantities of quality and socially acceptable food and due to socio-economic health factors.

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.

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

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.

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

Activities on health determinants

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;

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

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;

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

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;

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;

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.

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;

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.