Public health

Maintaining the highest possible level of public health protection, especially for an ageing population, is a key challenge for Europe in the changing global socio-economic landscape. Effective public health policies need to address a wide variety of complex issues, ranging from individual lifestyle choices to environmental exposure factors, as well as the affordability of medical and health-care facilities. There is a need for more coordinated efforts in the EU, both in the drive towards prevention of illnesses as well as in the harmonisation of procedures and promotion of best practices in diagnosis and treatment of illnesses.

The EU complements health actions conducted at national levels. This consists mainly of protecting people from health threats and disease, promoting healthy lifestyles and helping national authorities in the EU cooperate on health issues. The rise in various types of diseases, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer or cardiovascular disorders presents particular challenges and would benefit from more coordinated approach both in tackling the underlying causes and in finding the most effective treatments.

JRC scientists are successfully developing new expertise to tackle these challenges. Activities address cancer and rare diseases, nutrition and healthy ageing, as well as behavioural science to find more effective solutions to tackling the health burden imposed by individual choice of diet and lifestyle.

They monitor emerging public health threats and they investigate daily environmental factors impacting on health. They explore innovative health technologies and offer open access to their facilities. Drawing on a longstanding experience, they develop methods and tools to assess risks related to chemicals (including pesticides and biocides). All this is done in close collaboration with other European Commission services, national organisations, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other stakeholders.

More information

Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety

EU cancer policy support initiatives

The JRC hosts the Commission Knowledge Centre on Cancer to foster coordination and alignment of Commission activities on cancer at both scientific and technical levels. Supporting the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and the Mission on Cancer it

• provides an evidence-clearing house for policy making on cancer prevention, early detection, treatment and survivorship
• operates and manages the European Cancer Information System and the European Cancer Inequalities Registry
• provides European guidelines and quality assurance schemes for cancer care
• is a Registry Data Hub for Cancer and Rare Diseases, supporting the European Health Data Space

We work to reduce the burden of cancer and non-communicable diseases, which constitute the most prevalent cause of death worldwide, in close collaboration with stakeholders, Member States and Commission services. 

European cancer burden and inequalities

The European Cancer Information System (ECIS) provides the latest information on indicators that quantify and anticipate cancer burden across Europe. You can explore geographical patterns and temporal trends of cancer incidence, mortality and survival data across Europe for the major cancer entities.

The European Cancer Inequalities Registry (ECIR) provides sound and reliable data on cancer prevention and care to identify trends, disparities and inequalities between Member States and regions. Explore country, sex, education income, urbanisation and age-related inequalities in cancer prevention and care across Europe.

European cancer guidelines and quality assurance

To offer quality screening and care thereby reducing inequalities in Europe, the European Commission Initiatives on Breast, Cervical and Colorectal Cancer provide healthcare guidelines on primary prevention, screening and diagnosis together with requirements covering the entire path of care. The quality assurance schemes, based on the European guidelines, are developed for healthcare services which can apply for certification under the European schemes showing persons frequenting their services that the care they will receive is compliant with European quality standards. 

This work is being extended to also cover gastric, lung and prostate cancers.

Health promotion, food policies and nutrition

Health promotion is a major driver of many Commission initiatives and strategies, such as the Farm to Fork Strategy, Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and the Healthier together – EU non-communicable diseases initiative. A main focus is on creating supportive food environments to enable healthy and sustainable diets and lifestyle.

The Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Knowledge Gateway is a reference point for public health policy makers providing reliable, independent and up-to date information on topics related to promotion of health and well-being.

Ensuring access to healthy diets for everyone while sparing the planet is essential for health promotion. The JRC supports a series of Commission and Member States initiatives in this area, such as Front-of-pack nutrition labelling, food procurement or food reformulation monitoring. FABLE (Food and Beverages Labels Explorer) holds datasets of branded food product information and is freely available for use by authorities and relevant stakeholders.

See the sustainable food systems page for more information about our work in this area.

EU Platform for Rare Diseases Registration

The EU Platform on Rare Disease Registration provides a central access point for fragmented information on rare diseases, improves access to patient registries, harmonises data and promotes interoperability between registries. The platform also hosts the European congenital anomalies registries and surveillance network.

See the page on innovation in Life and health sciences for more information on about our work in this area.

Health data

The Collaborative Health Information European Framework (CHIEF) is a EU-led initiative outlining a common framework for the continued delivery of comparable indicators of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) across Europe in a timely manner.

CHIEF’s initial focus has been in the domain of diabetes, since it built on a number of general concepts and principles that have been specifically implemented in this overall context within the EUBIROD project (European Best Information through Regional Outcomes in Diabetes). 

Further details on the scope and structure of the collaboration are described in the publication: "Linking registries to deliver standardised NCD indicators in the European Health Data Space: why do we need a Collaborative Health Information European Framework (CHIEF)".

All the elements of the framework are in the process of being published in a special issue of the journal Frontiers in Public Health entitled: “The Design of Collaborative Frameworks for Sustainable Health Indicators in Europe: Using Diabetes and Its Complications as a Scalable Model Across Disease Domains”.

Experts involved in the CHIEF initiative

Technologies for health

The European Health Union improves EU-level protection, prevention, preparedness and response against human health hazards.

Key initiatives support modernised regulatory frameworks to strengthen innovation, digitalisation, research and technologies for life-saving treatments, vaccines and medical devices. 

The JRC uses its scientific and technical expertise to advance the European Health Union. This includes

• addressing technological solutions for pandemic preparedness
• technical & scientific support to ensure the performance and safety of medical devices and in vitro diagnostics, e.g. the designation of EU reference laboratories for high-risk in vitro diagnostic medical devices
• offering open access to the JRC Nanobiotechnology Laboratory with its innovative equipment and techniques
• ensuring safe and (cyber)secure use of devices, data and AI systems in healthcare and exploring innovative health technologies to tackle e.g. cancer

See the pages on health crisis response and life and health sciences for more information about our work.

Environmental quality standards for water

Environmental Quality Standard (EQS) means the concentration of a particular pollutant or group of pollutants in water, sediment or in all living organisms of a given area, which should not be exceeded in order to protect human health and the environment. The Water Framework Directive describes how and when EQS for pollutants should be developed, and states that pollutants presenting a significant risk to water ecosystems or via water should be identified by the European Commission and classified as priority substances, with the most hazardous of these classified as priority hazardous substances. Since 2006 the JRC has been working on a comprehensive prioritisation scheme for these substances.

The JRC sells and develops suitable reference materials for substances on the priority list in fresh- and seawater and related matrices such as biota and sediment.

Exposure and health impact methodology

Various pieces of EU legislation require that the health impact of being exposed to chemicals and other physical and biological factors is accurately assessed. Analysing the effects of these factors over a sustained period is a highly complex process. The JRC develops methodologies and tools for systematic and standardised assessment of the health impacts of exposure to the chemicals referenced in EU legislation.

Human biomonitoring

Human biomonitoring is an analytical approach which focuses on directly measuring the volume of toxic chemical compounds present in the body. Often, these measurements are done from blood and urine. The way the chemicals accumulate in air, soil or water may be quite different from their behaviour in the human body. Analysis of environmental chemicals in human tissues is the most effective way of knowing which environmental chemicals we should be most wary of. It is an important tool for assessing human exposure to environmental substances and in some cases their potential health risks. It is seen as an essential element in a strategy for environmental health impact assessment. The JRC helps developing a coherent approach to the collection and analysis of this important data.

Indoor air quality

We spend most of our time indoors, whether in homes, offices, schools, nurseries, shops or cars. In all these environments building materials and consumer products such as paints, furniture and fittings, printers, cleaning agents etc., can affect indoor air quality. They all emit chemicals, not to mention other environmental pollution caused by humidity or tobacco smoke. Prolonged exposure to any of these could result in a negative impact on health. The JRC, apart from direct research on pollutants' impact on the indoor air quality works towards harmonisation and standardisation of testing methods at the European level.

Medical Information System - MedISys

Internet surveillance systems are routinely used for early event detection, alerting and tracking of emerging public health threats. The Medical Information System (MedISys), developed by the JRC, helps to rapidly identify potential threats to public health. Statistical modelling techniques help to distinguish topics that appear regularly in the news from those that are suddenly reported, meaning that advance warning can be given if a topic of concern arises. Based on MedISys technology, the JRC also contributes to the Early Alerting and Reporting (EAR) project of the Global Health Security Initiative (GHSI).