André Knottnerus has been appointed President of the Scientific Council for Government Policy as of 1 May. The Scientific Council for Government Policy produces scientific advice for the overall governmental policy and collaborates with the Health Council regarding public health policy issues. Louise Gunning succeeded André Knottnerus as President of the Health Council of the Netherlands. Over the last ten years, she was the Dean and President of the Academic Medical Centre at the University of Amsterdam. Before that she was professor of Social Medicine at the AMC. In that position, she had the opportunity to get to know many colleagues in Europe as they worked together on EU research projects and founded the European Public Health Association, EUPHA. At the last steering committee face to face meeting in The Hague, we thanked André Knottnerus for what he has done in setting up EuSANH and in serving as its first President, and invited him to stay on in the coming years as an advisor to do as much and for as long as his current position will allow him. In addition, we welcomed Louise Gunning as our new EuSANH president.

EuSANH will present a poster at the European Health Forum in Gastein, 6-9 October 2010.

The second day is dedicated to sharing information and expertise among staff members of the Science Advisory Bodies and on fine-tuning of EuSANH members’ work programmes for 2010. This day will be introduced by a key lecture of professor Martin McKee: ‘How can we best support evidence- informed policy making’. Staff members are invited to give presentations on recently finalised or ongoing science advisory reports from their organisations.

The first annual meeting of EuSANH(-ISA) will take place on April 28-29, 2010 in Warsaw, Poland.

This first day will be dedicated to our EuSANH-ISA project. After an opening speech by representatives of the European Commission (Mr N. Fahy of DG Sanco and Mr K. McCarthy of DG Research are invited) and the Polish Ministry of Health, the progress in various work packages will be discussed. Further the External Advisory Committee (EAC) shall be invited to comment on the work progress and draft reports. Professor Martin Mc Kee, one of our advisors, will give his reflection on the EuSANH-ISA project at the end of the first day.

Romania and Poland have worked hard to finalise the questionnaire of WP2. The aim of the questionnaire is twofold. On the one hand, the policy analysis (Part I) will enable us to create a profile of the organisations participating in the study, as a basis for mutual learning, and thereby lay foundation for an ‘ideal’ science advisory structure. On the other hand, the second part of the questionnaire will refer to particular situations of producing science advice for health in your organisation. The main scope of this part is to collect valid information about scientific advisory reports published by each EuSANH member organisation over the last 3-4 years. The questionnaires were sent to each national science advisory body that is also a member of the EuSANH network. More information about the results of the survey will be published as soon as it is available.

One of the core tasks within WP 4 is the development of a dynamic but sustainable communication and cooperation structure for EuSANH beyond the time frame of the EuSANH-ISA project. The sustainable structure needs to support EuSANH’s main objective, namely: the promotion of independent scientific advice on health issues to national and European health authorities and to support evidence based health policies. Taking all different elements into account, we believe that a bottum-up approach in support of the idea of a coordinating network with different expert groups working on a specific subject will form the best possible basis for the (future) EuSANH network. Nevertheless, at the same time, there should be a top-down monitoring of the identity, strategy and integrity of the network as a whole.

WP5 started in February 2010 and has so far focused on defining the topic of the pilot case study, identifying relevant reports as well as contacting potential collaborators. The suggested topic is a science advisory report on “Determinants of a successful implementation of population based cancer screening programs” and the primary objective is to analyze the processes for the initiation, production and implementation of certain screening programmes in relation to their uptake in different countries. For further details, please contact allander@sbu.se.

Minutes will be published soon.