Slovaks live fewer years in good health than the European average. At the same time, Slovakia’s healthcare system is facing the second-fastest population ageing in the European Union (EU), after Poland. Experts are meeting at a conference in the High Tatras to look for ways to reverse this trend.
Zuzana Katreniaková, chairwoman of SAVEZ (the Slovak Association of Public Health) and a member of the governing board of EUPHA (the European Public Health Association), said the answer to these challenges lies not only in new equipment and medicines, but also in making better use of data, artificial intelligence and more effective prevention.
These issues are being discussed at the sixth Public Health Conference of the V4 countries and the seventh SAVEZ conference, taking place this week in the High Tatras with experts from Europe, Canada and Australia.
According to Katreniaková, the goal is to ensure that decisions affecting population health are based on data and prevention.
“For the seventh time, the conference is bringing experts to Slovakia whose work has an impact on public health across Europe. They will also discuss issues that are particularly relevant to us, from prevention to population ageing,” Katreniaková said.
Life expectancy in Slovakia is 78.6 years, but there is a particularly significant gap when it comes to the number of years people live without health limitations. Slovak men can expect to live 56.8 years in good health, compared with the European average of 62.8 years. This is the third-lowest figure in the EU.
According to experts, a key challenge is to bring proven approaches and innovations into everyday practice and make them accessible to people.
“Often, the problem is that we know what works, but we are unable to get it to the people who need it. That is precisely what the conference will focus on — how to turn knowledge into practice so that both patients and the healthcare system can benefit,” said Iveta Rajničová Nagyová, head of the Department of Social and Behavioral Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University (UPJŠ) in Košice and a member of The Lancet Commission on the European Health Union.
She also stressed that innovation in public health does not always mean a new medicine, technology or state-of-the-art hospital.
“If we want to improve the health of the population, we need to invest not only in treatment, but much more in prevention, health literacy and evidence-based interventions that take human behaviour into account — in other words, in behavioural and social innovations,” she added.
Research is therefore also looking at how older people cope with digital healthcare, so that modern healthcare services do not remain accessible only to certain groups.
Katreniaková also highlighted the importance of international cooperation taking place in person.
“Slovakia does not have to reinvent everything from scratch. For three days, experts behind proven solutions will sit in the same room with Slovak researchers, doctors, public health professionals and government representatives. And that is what determines whether these solutions actually make their way here, or whether we will simply read about them,” she said.
The international event, which runs from Wednesday through Friday, September 11, also includes a workshop organized as part of the Swiss-Slovak Cooperation Programme. It focuses on systematic prevention of chronic diseases in regions and workplaces.
The conference was organized by representatives of the Department of Social and Behavioral Medicine at the UPJŠ Faculty of Medicine in Košice, SAVEZ, the Slovak Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization (WHO), EUPHA and EuroHealthNet.
Source: TASR
