Given Europe’s ageing population, The Guild calls for increased funding for research on healthy ageing. This includes funding for research into primary care, which is crucial to address chronic disabilities and reduce the number of preventable hospitalisations.
Considering the current geopolitical situation, The Guild emphasises the necessity of increasing Europe’s resilience against threats of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and the disruption of critical public services and civilian infrastructures. Therefore, Horizon Europe should fund research aiming at a better understanding of war-related illnesses and disorders, including those affecting mental health.
The Guild also stresses the need to invest more in research preventing and tackling diseases, whilst enhancing pandemic preparedness. Horizon Europe must also invest in research on non-communicable diseases as well as on multimorbidity and the interactions between both types of diseases. Furthermore, focusing on the development of pharmacological interventions would be insufficient to tackle health disorders and their burdens. Instead, Horizon Europe must support research for better integration of these interventions with preventive healthcare and lifestyle interventions.
Finally, although the European Mission on Cancer is a unique opportunity to boost research on cancer, The Guild raises concerns about the Mission's ability to fully address the broader challenges that the disease brings. Horizon Europe should provide more funding for collaborative fundamental research aimed at creating new knowledge on cancer.
“To effectively tackle existing and coming health challenges, multidisciplinary and collaborative research is essential to develop solutions that will improve the well-being of citizens throughout their lives and to ensure equal access to health care across Europe. Also investment in the development of solutions for the safe (cross-border) exchange of health data is of crucial importance.” said Anne-Mette Hvas, Dean of the Faculty of Health at Aarhus University. “I am pleased with The Guild reiterating its plea to ensure the role of health research in Horizon Europe’s Pillar 2.”
Jan Palmowski, Secretary-General of The Guild, said: “The tremendous health challenges faced by Europeans demonstrate the urgency of investing in health research, now and in the future. But we do not just need more investment, we also need an alignment of regulations on cross-border clinical trials, and appropriate data sharing. This is critical to enable European health research to be more than the sum of its parts, meeting the many hopes and demands of Europeans for better, affordable healthcare.”
7 February 2023
Find below additional publications The Guild published in response to the European Commission consultation on the Horizon Europe programme:
Re-orient Horizon Europe missions to support cutting-edge research | 24 January 2023
Priorities for Strengthening Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities Research in Horizon Europe | 31 January 2023
Priorities for digital and artificial intelligence research in Horizon Europe | 14 February 2023
Homepage image: Main entrance, new main building, Radboud university medical center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Copyright: © Radboudumc / EGM architecten