WHO and EU Committee of the Regions sign agreement on health policy

Building on the momentum of the new European health policy framework ‘Health 2020’ and the Agenda for Sustainable Development, the European Committee of the Regions and WHO/Europe signed, on 21st November, an agreement to join efforts in the field of public health.

Priority areas covered by the new agreement include:

• investing in health through a life-course approach and by empowering people;
• tackling the challenges of non-communicable and communicable diseases;
• strengthening people-centered health systems, public health capacity, and emergency preparedness, surveillance and response; and
• creating resilient communities and supportive environments.

Read more in this article on WHO website

AGE welcomes this agreement, which recognizes the importance of combining actions at all levels and the key role played by the regions to improve public health. It is also perfectly in line with our campaign on age-friendly environments, which promotes supportive environments for healthy and ageing with a life-course perspective, and the work done within the European Covenant on demographic change, which fosters cooperation for healthy and active ageing policies at regional and local levels.