The 2017 ERS Presidential Summit took place in Ghent, Belgium on 13–14 June. This year the Summit addressed ‘A public health approach to respiratory health’, and was led by current ERS President Professor Guy Joos.
The Summit acknowledged the traditional leading role that respiratory health professionals have played in promoting public health measures. It also highlighted the contrasting elements of moving towards more personalised and precise medicine, which focusses on the individual, versus the broader notion of public health, which focusses on population-level health benefits.
In welcoming attendees to the event, Professor Joos highlighted “The possibility to detect and cure disease at an individual level offers unparalleled promise for patients. But this vision of healthcare can find itself pitted directly against public health, which relies on a broader approach.”
A number of expert speakers, both from within the respiratory sphere and beyond, were invited to present on key health topics with the overall aim of addressing the following questions: is respiratory disease a particular case in terms of public health; can we benefit from looking at respiratory health through the lens of public health; how should we identify research needs; and how should interventions be targeted and at what level.
The Summit opened by setting the scene in terms of public health in Europe. Presentations offered a picture of public health from both an EU perspective and national perspective – looking specifically at Portugal as an example. While at a local or community level there are promising initiatives, at a European level there remains a gap in appreciating the economic benefit in terms of healthcare costs of population level public health measures.
The two-day event was split into two key themes – opening with respiratory non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which considered whether public health control programmes can work for asthma, the best prevention and control of COPD, and discussed a public health approach to lung cancer.
The second theme was respiratory infections, and presentations addressed challenges to prevention including influenza in Europe and antimicrobial resistance, and the issues surrounding access to medicine in the case of tuberculosis.
Following the presentations, speakers and attendees were invited to take part in breakout sessions in which they collaboratively developed a ‘respiratory health pyramid’ to determine the key factors relating to successful public health approaches to NCDs, infectious diseases and lung cancer. As a follow up, these deliberations are currently being refined and finalised.
Among the conclusions it was noted that both advocacy and education are key to tackling risk factors associated with a number of respiratory conditions. Research is also vitally important and there is a clear need for public health research to be better funded within EU funding programmes). Additionally, the promotion of epidemiology as a discipline within healthcare will be key in ensuring both the data and expertise needed for the future.
Following the event, Professor Joos emphasised “Promoting respiratory health globally is a mission of our Society and more needs to be done. Further steps need to be taken to ensure that important public health measures are defined for respiratory health. Respiratory health has seen a number of successes in terms of public health, but we must now keep pushing for policies which continue in this trend.”