European Public Health News * President's Column * EUPHA office column * Message from the WHO Regional Director for Europe: Vienna Declaration--a milestone in the fight against non-communicable diseases * Message from the European Director General for Health and Consumers: How can we best tackle all serious cross border health threats? * 6th European Public Health Conference--"Health in Europe: are

Abstract

In this European public health news, we are looking at the future. Ricciardi looks at nine challenges for health care and calls for a new overarching paradigm. Jakab describes the newly adopted Vienna declaration as a milestone in the fight against non-communicable diseases and Testori Coggi explains the positive impact on European public health of the EU decision on serious cross-border health threats. This makes it even more important to build the capacity and knowledge of public health professionals, and EUPHA and the EPH Conference are two tools to ensure this—now and in the future! # President’s Column {#article-title-2} Just as it is impossible for the citizen of today to go out into their garden and dig a well for clean clear water, so it is impossible for them to create the health service they need when and where they need it. Like water supply, the supply of a health service requires the organized efforts of society and is therefore a public health service. The most important paradigm of the 20th century in Europe was the idea that health care was a right and not a privilege, but during the second half of the 20th century, there were a number of paradigm shifts, and each new paradigm embraced the previous one and has not rendered it invalid. First came the effectiveness paradigm; this developed after the publication of Archie Cochrane’s book on Effectiveness and Efficiency, which emphasized that the evidence of effectiveness derived from the study of groups, or samples, of patients was more reliable than that derived from experience. Nowadays every European country is committed to ensuring that its citizens receive a health service of assured quality, just as they are committed to ensuring that its citizens receive water or education of assured quality, although the task of providing quality-assured health care is …