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 II 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, relevant national organisations, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other stakeholders.

More information

Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety

The JRC hosts the EC Knowledge Centre on Cancer (KCC) to foster coordination and alignment of EC 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. You can read more about our work below and by following the links to our dedicated websites.

The European Cancer Information System (ECIS) provides the latest information on indicators that quantify and anticipate cancer burden across Europe. One 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.

To reduce inequalities in Europe and offer essential quality care, the European Commission Initiatives on Breast and Colorectal Cancer (ECIBC and ECICC) work to provide breast and colorectal cancer guidelines on prevention, screening, diagnosis and care. Furthermore, these initiatives offer associated quality assurance schemes to healthcare services, to facilitate implementation where it matters, i.e. in real settings. This work will soon be extended to cover cervical, prostate, lung and gastric cancers.

Health promotion is a major driver in many Commission’s initiatives and strategies, such as Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F), Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and the Healthier together – EU non-communicable diseases (NCD) 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 (HKG) 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 (FOP) 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.

Our page dedicated to Sustainable food systems provides more information about our work in this area.

The EU Platform on Rare Disease Registration (EU RD Platform) 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.

Our page dedicated to innovation in Life and health sciences provides more information on about our work in this area.

In addition to our work on Cancer and Rare Disease data, the Collaborative Health Information European Framework (CHIEF), aims to effectively and sustainably provide indicators, guidelines and policy output for the decision makers and healthcare professionals on other non-communicable diseases.

In 2023, indicators will be displayed on effect on mortality rate, giving understanding on quality of care, best practices and what can be tackled.

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.

The pages dedicated to Health crisis response and Life and health sciences provide more information about our work in those areas.

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.

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 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.

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.

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).

Novel treatments to treat serious diseases are vital to ensure the health of our citizens. Targeted alpha therapy, also called alpha-immunotherapy, uses radioisotopes in the fight against cancer.

Medical applications of radionuclides and targeted alpha therapy

Related links

Health crisis response

JRC Nanotechnology laboratory