Europe’s future is at stake: no Public Health without Occupational Health

Many of us feel the urgency to join forces for the sake of Europe’s<br/>future. We, professors in Work and Health, argue that to do so,<br/>the connection between Public Health and Occupational Health<br/>needs to be intensified in research and policy.<br/>In Europe, the expected average working life duration increased<br/>by 2.4 years, from 34.8 years to the current 37.2 years [1]. At the<br/>same time, Europe is facing a workforce crisis: ‘we need to produce<br/>more products and work harder’ according to the Draghi report.<br/>However, McKee and colleagues justly commented that ‘health’ as a<br/>main driver is missing in the report [2]. Fortunately, the Next<br/>Generation European Union programme [3] calls for investments<br/>in healthcare, education for the tech-driven world, small and medium enterprises and in young entrepreneurs [3].<br/>We should be more precise though. Europe’s future aim should be<br/>to keep healthy Europeans healthy, to improve the health of disadvantaged Europeans and to improve fair access to financially stable<br/>health care. These aims require a strong connection and exchange<br/>between Public Health and Occupational Health in two directions.<br/>First, Public Health should increase the attention for Occupational<br/>Health, that is to the exposure to (new) unhealthy working conditions. Second, Occupational Health should turn the lens on the entire working population.