European Public Health News * President's Column--Public involvement and public health * EUPHA office column * Message From the Regional Director * Twenty-Five Years of EU Cancer Policy * All Inclusive Public Health Malta, 7-10 November 2012

Abstract

This European public health news mainly focuses on partnerships and the importance of including the public. Ricciardi addresses the need to involve the public in decisions in health care; Jakab focuses on patient empowerment and the importance to work in partnership; Thayer describes the success of partnership of the 25 years of European Union (EU) cancer policy. # President’s Column—Public involvement and public health {#article-title-2} Public involvement at the highest levels of decision-making and health prioritization is still not common in Europe. Recent data show that patients are represented in decisions pertaining to the licensing of pharmaceuticals only in the Czech Republic, Denmark and Sweden, whereas they are represented in decisions relating to the coverage of health services in the Czech Republic, Denmark, The Netherlands and Switzerland (OECD 2010). In all other countries, they have no involvement or only a marginal one, with no significant responsibility in decision-making. If we leave the field of principles and go on to consider the practical factors that appear to influence the actual scope of benefits guaranteed, it becomes plain that the evolution of the former has been heavily affected by the development of the latter. Since the definition of the structures of most European health systems after the Second World War, health costs have been increasing steadily. With regard to high-income countries (which all European countries are), the main factors on which responsibility for this trend is blamed are demographic changes leading to population ageing (with increased co-morbidity), advances in technology with introduction of increasingly expensive equipment and growing expectations on the part of the population on the efficiency and the quality of care. It is therefore not surprising that cost containment figures prominently in the agenda of health care policymakers. The first consequence of cost pressures is the increase in health care institutions’ deficits; other common consequences are also purely …