Brussels, 04/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - It is only a working document at the moment, but the European Commission's rough draft of the calls for tender for research and health for 2014 and 2015 rouses general discontent among epidemiological and public health associations. In a joint statement on Monday 30 September, they lambaste the Commission's approach - which the associations believe is inadequate, incomplete and too oriented towards biotechnology and personalised medicine. The Commission replied that they should not have had access to this document.
Health research will be one of the three activity lines allocated the biggest budget in the next EU framework programme (Horizon 2020). Of the total budget, 9.7% will be dedicated to health research between 2014 and 2020 (in other words, probably the equivalent of €7 billion). In a working document - Health, demographic change and wellbeing - the Commission has set out a list of the main areas that will be favoured in the calls for tender in 2014 and d2015. The International Epidemiological Association (IEA), the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE), and the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) have together called for a major revision of this work programme.
The objections addressed to the Commission contain four points: (1) the priorities identified do “not address adequately major public health problems of the European population and major personal, social, environmental and occupational risk factors of disease”; (2) there is no mention of the health effects of the economic crisis (for example, poverty and personal hygiene); (3) the Commission seriously under-estimates the importance of research on health systems and health policy; (4) far too great an emphasis is put on biotechnology and personalised medicine (32 of the 42 priorities identified) - to the detriment of research on prevention, in particular.
In the view of the head of the IEA, Cesar Victora, “the narrow approach adopted by Horizon 2020 is not only of concern to European epidemiologists but to epidemiologists and other health researchers globally. Europe has led the world in developing collaborative projects investigating social and environmental determinants of health, and these have been of major benefit, and provided role models, for researchers in the rest of the world.” Given the prospect that the Commission is currently offering, Victora asks: “How can we expect researchers from around the globe to tackle their major health problems, when we are not doing this in Europe?”
The Commission puts up its defence by saying that “this is the first work programme under Horizon 2020”. “We remain in contact with stakeholders as we finalise it”, said Michael Jennings, the spokesperson for European Commissioner for Research and Innovation Maire Geoghegan Quinn. Jennings told EUROPE that “for Horizon 2020, we have deliberately not drawn up prescriptive 'shopping lists' for the first funding round [Ed: which will be launched on 11 December], so that researchers themselves can shape the agenda and have more freedom to propose what they think will work best”. (JK/transl.fl)