Competence Centre on Foresight

Good mental health is a central part of overall health and well-being.

Science and better living standards have reduced infectious diseases. Unhealthy lifestyles, pollution and other anthropogenic causes are turning into health burdens.

Health is challenged by the emergence of new infectious diseases that are spreading in our increasingly connected world and by diseases that are resistant to antibiotics.

Big data, new technologies and people-centred approaches in healthcare are promising new predictive, diagnostic and therapeutic approaches that are becoming even more personalised.

There is increasing realisation that health is a multifactorial outcome with strong causal links to the environment in which humans live.

Digitalisation is bringing changes to society that offer both opportunities and challenges for health.

Diet paterns — both, levels of consumption and composition — increase the “triple burden” of undernourishment, over-nourishment and malnutrition on peoples' health, mostly in developing countries. |...

Climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050 due to heat stress, diarrhoea, malaria, and childhood undernutrition. |...

Higher temperatures have resulted in range expansions for key disease carriers, such as mosquitoes. The incidence of malaria, dengue, and haemorrhagic fever is correlated with temperature, precipitation, and humidity...

Air pollution remains the single largest environmental health hazard in Europe, resulting in a lower quality of life due to illnesses and an estimated over 500,000 premature deaths...