European Commission adopts health work plan for 2017

As part of the pluri-annual framework of the European Commission in health (Third Health programme), the European Commission issued its annual work plan for 2017 to guide its work over the year. With the 2017 plan, the European Commission has set a priority on addressing disease risk factors including unhealthy food, alcohol and tobacco consumption or air pollution. Food reformulation and preventing children’s exposure to marketing of unhealthy food are particular focus fields of action. The programme includes funding for a “Joint Action on Health Information towards a sustainable EU health information system that supports country knowledge, health research and policy-making”, further joint work with the OECD to support “work on building trust and strengthening cooperation for addressing the challenges of access to medicines” as well as action to support the design and implementation of public procurement guidelines for food and support the implementation of the new Tobacco Products Directive and further development of existing tobacco control measures on the EU level.
The work programme and executive summary are available in the corresponding links.