New Exposome Alliance to put prevention at the heart of EU policy
Members of the European Parliament, leading health researchers including Roel Vermeulen, and major European health organisations today launched the Exposome Alliance at the European Parliament, marking a coordinated effort to tackle the environmental and social drivers of Europe’s growing chronic disease burden and shift EU policy decisively towards prevention.
Convened by MEP Christophe Clergeau (S&D, France), the event brought together policymakers, scientists and civil society organisations around a shared objective: reducing cancer, cardiovascular, respiratory and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by addressing the lifelong exposures that drive them and ensure citizen age healthy.
Prevention is no longer a dream. It is a data-driven reality.
Opening the conference, Prof. Roel Vermeulen, co-chair of the Alliance, stressed the scientific urgency: “Europe has the knowhow, capacity and tools. What we now need is a coordinated effort to measure real-world exposures at scale, and clarify their impacts on health — because prevention starts with understanding what surrounds us."
Science and policy
Vermeulen is Professor of Environmental Epidemiology and Exposome Science at Utrecht University and the Utrecht University Medical Centre. “It is rewarding to see science and policy really coming together and joining forces. In Utrecht, we place a strong emphasis on planetary health and the exposome within our life sciences research. The potential is massive, and it is great to see this being recognized and driven forward at the European level. By strengthening the science-to-policy interface in an official way we can really now work on impact”
Europe must shift from treating disease to preventing it. The exposome offers the knowledge and data we need to act on the root causes of ill health — where we live, how we live, where and how we work, the pollutions and hazardous chemicals we are exposed to across our entire lifespan. With this Alliance, we are building a coalition between scientists, policy makers and civil society strong enough to ensure prevention becomes a European priority.
Speakers highlighted the growing scientific consensus on the exposome — the compilation of environmental, chemical, social and lifestyle exposures that shape health across the life course – The exposome is estimated to account for up to 90% of health negative outcomes.
The Alliance presented three strategic priorities for the EU’s next Multiannual Financial Framework: a €1 billion “Mission Exposome” under Horizon Europe including a 10 million person EU longitudinal cohort; the creation of a European Exposome Data Space to securely link health, environmental and social data across borders; and the establishment of an EU Common Prevention Pillar to better coordinate action on upstream determinants of non-communicable diseases.