EuSANH

Individual Member States have their own independent national science advisory bodies giving advice on health to national health authorities, professionals and the general public. Within the EU, various agencies and scientific committees provide scientific information on specific subjects but on the whole, science advice on health issues in Europe is currently rather heterogeneous and fragmented. On the other hand, there is a rapid increase in scientific knowledge, and complex health issues have to be dealt with throughout Europe. This points to the need for transnational exchange and collaboration in the area of science advice on health.

At the invitational meeting on ‘Science advice on public health at national and European level’ in The Hague, in September 2005, representatives of several European organisations were participating. Dr Kevin McCarthy from DG Research expressed great interest in this activity on science advice. He mentioned that DG Research is trying to establish new relationships between science and policy makers in order to bridge the gap between research and policy. Dr Peter Wagstaffe from DG Sanco underlined the need for coordination and cooperation on science advice. This would lower the risk of producing internationally inconsistent scientific advice on similar health issues, and would promote economy of effort through the sharing of information on scientific matters as well as the exchange of national work programmes. As a result of this discussion, a European Science Advisory Network for Health (EuSANH) was founded in September 2006 holding its first conference at DG Research in Brussels.

In November 2007, a 2^nd EuSANH conference was hosted by the European Commission in Luxembourg and otherwise financed by the Dutch Ministry of Health. Participants included EuSANH members, EuSANH advisors, and representatives of DG Research and DG Sanco. The major part of the meeting was dedicated to the exchange of methodological aspects of science advice. Participants presented specific advisory projects from their organisations emphasizing methodological issues. It was concluded that exchange and collaboration on the methodology of producing science advisory reports (both in retrospect and prospectively) is a major added value for the EU, and that EuSANH could be an effective platform to achieve that. A comparison of evidence-based science advisory reports in the area of diabetes and obesity showed that, in different EU countries, comparable guidelines had been produced at the same time, without relevant exchange and international collaboration. Similar situations were noted in areas such as smoking cessation and prenatal screening. This emphasised the importance to exchange national work programmes to avoid unnecessary duplication of efforts.

All participants at the conference were positive about further continuation of EuSANH activities. They supported the submission of a project proposal to strengthen the network and to develop a common methodological framework to support collaboration in science advice on trans-boundary health topics. Since the funding of the Dutch Ministry of Health will stop in 2008, there was an urgent need for additional financial support to enable this pioneering EuSANH initiative to become an effective and sustainable European network for science advisory bodies on health.

Therefore, the EuSANH network established a joint working programme on Improving Science Advice for Health (EuSANH-ISA) with the general objective to improve the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of science advice for health across Europe. The EuSANH-ISA project is supported by the 7th Framework Programme of DG Research (European Commission) from February 2009 until February 2012.