European public health news.

Abstract

In this main European public health (EPH) news, there is a clear call for the public health community to unite (Andriukaitis), combine efforts (McKee, Zeegers Paget) and to work intersectoral (Jakab). We need all of this to make the voice of the public health community visible and loud. # President's Column {#article-title-2} One of the most important roles of the public health community is to make the invisible visible. Frequently we find ourselves giving voice to the unheard, the many marginalized and often vulnerable groups whose needs remain unseen by our political leaders. We use our epidemiological skills to detect otherwise invisible associations, shedding light on previously unknown risk factors for disease and detecting patterns in complex data. However, increasingly we find ourselves shedding light on those powerful vested interests that threaten population health. The work of tobacco-control researchers exemplifies this, dredging through thousands of industry documents to reveal behaviour that is almost always immoral and sometimes illegal. More recently, researchers seeking to understand policy on food and alcohol have had to resort to the same tactics to understand how those industries operate, showing that they have frequently adopted the same methods as the tobacco industry. This body of work has led to the increasing use of the term ‘commercial determinants of health’, with its focus on how large corporations frame the prevailing narrative, defining what is considered possible and what is not, capture the regulators and in some cases, write the laws in ways that will advantage them. In recent months, EUPHA has sought to make two of these processes more visible. Attracting little public attention, the European Commission has been promoting a Trade Secrets Directive that would give large corporations an exceptional degree of protection from public scrutiny.1 Along with many other organizations concerned about health, the environment and transparency, we …