Towards Greater Impact: Strengthening Visibility and Alignment of European Best Practice Portals

Abstract When searching for effective public health interventions across Europe, professionals often face a confusing landscape: some countries promote “good”, others “best”, and others still “promising” practices - often referring to similar concepts. Likewise, widely used terms such as evidence and criteria differ significantly in meaning and application across national portals. This lack of conceptual and structural alignment complicates efforts to compare, access, and use best practices strategically across countries. This presentation addresses these challenges by exploring two interlinked approaches aimed at increasing the visibility, comparability, and political relevance of best practice portals in Europe. Elke Hackländer (BIÖG) introduces a pilot initiative within the Joint Action PreventNCD to create a web-based “portal of portals.” This tool will provide structured access to comparable information from national best practice portals. Based on expert dialogue and consultations, uniform comparison criteria are being developed to enable mutual learning, increase transparency, and support evidence-informed decision-making. A pretest survey was conducted to refine these criteria and inform the repository structure. Katarzyna Lewtak (PZH-PIB, Poland) presents complementary efforts undertaken during the Polish EU Presidency to increase the political visibility and uptake of best practices in public health. These efforts focus on translating identified best practices into actionable knowledge for policy development at the national and EU levels. Together, both contributions demonstrate how strategic alignment and stronger visibility mechanisms can foster equity-oriented, evidence-informed health promotion across Europe.