This special issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health focuses on non-communicable disease (NCD) prevention and health promotion across Europe in the context of the Joint Action on Cancer and other NCDs prevention – Action on Health Determinants (JA PreventNCD). Published as the project reaches its halfway point, it highlights how JA PreventNCD is designed to help countries reduce the burden of NCDs, which account for more than two thirds of the disease burden in the WHO European Region, much of it preventable.
The Joint Action supports strategies and policies that address common risk factors at personal and societal level, strengthens monitoring systems for NCDs and their determinants, and seeks to reduce inequalities by engaging decision makers, professionals, civil society and communities. With 25 participating countries and more than 100 partner institutions, JA PreventNCD is one of the most ambitious collaborative efforts on NCD prevention and health promotion in Europe, funded through the EU4Health programme and contributing to the EU “Healthier Together” initiative.
This special issue brings together papers that describe the scientific and strategic foundations of JA PreventNCD and its approach to scaling up prevention across Europe. The articles explain how the Joint Action is organised, how work is planned across countries and work streams, and how cross-sectoral collaboration, equity, youth engagement and commercial determinants of health are integrated into the overall design.
The collection includes contributions from all technical areas of the Joint Action, complemented by invited perspectives from key partners. The WHO Regional Office for Europe underlines the urgency of accelerating population-level prevention, strengthening surveillance and protecting public health policies from commercial influence. The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE) situates JA PreventNCD within the wider EU agenda on NCDs and cardiovascular health. An editorial by Professor Harry Rutter, Chair of the External Expert Advisory Board for JA PreventNCD, reflects on the potential of the Joint Action to support more structural and equitable approaches to prevention.
Taken together, the papers and commentaries provide a reference point for understanding how JA PreventNCD is set up to support countries in the coming years, and how it connects to broader European and global efforts on NCD prevention.
On the JA PreventNCD website, links and summaries for all JA PreventNCD articles in this special issue can be found in the Resources section. These entries are tagged “SJPH Special Issue” so readers can easily filter and explore the collection.
Read the full special issue in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health