European Public Health News * President's column * EUPHA office column--EUPHA 1992-2012 * Message from the World Health Organization Regional Director for Europe Healthy Ageing in Europe: Empowering More People to Remain Active and Healthy at Higher Ages * European Commission Proposes Measures to Better Protect Europeans from Serious Cross-border Threats to Health * Malta 2012 5th Annual European Public

Abstract

In this European public health news, the main themes are management and leadership. Ricciardi starts with concluding that management is of vital importance, but leadership even more so. Zeegers Paget follows with discussing leadership of and within EUPHA. Jakab presents the leadership of WHO EURO in this year of healthy ageing, followed by Takki and Ryan who describe the proactive management by the EU to protect Europeans from serious cross-border health threats. It all shows that leadership and management are basic necessary skills to further European public health. # President’s column {#article-title-2} Some people, use and have used the word manager and leader as synonyms. However there is increasing agreement of the fact that leadership and management are different activities although many managers also are leaders. Perhaps one way to describe it now is to say that all leaders also have to manage but not all managers are leaders. So what is leadership and how does it differ from management? This is not an easy question to answer because, as always happens, the more widely a term is used the more meanings it acquires. One approach is to define management as primarily concerned with the running of an operation. In the excellent book called Trying Hardest Is Not Good Enough, a very important book for everyone involved in healthcare although it is primarily about education, Mark Friedman says that management is ‘the day to day a month to month running of operations’. Leadership is more than management and John Kotter, another very influential writer, distinguishes the two clearly. There are probably two features of the work of the leader that are crucial. One is that the leader has to help people adapt to bad news, to reframe their view of the world and to help them overcome significant problems. The other is that the …