28.G. Workshop: Foresight studies at the global, European and national level: what can we learn from them?

Foresight studies provide valuable information for (strategic) policy-making. They provide insights into the most important future trends and challenges, which is essential for well-informed policy-making. The number of foresight studies in the field of Public Health was limited but the number of studies is growing rapidly over last years. With these studies becoming available, their findings might become a more a regular component of population health monitoring activities. Given the relatively early stage of development of foresight studies in the field of Public health, a proper understanding and interpretation of the future studies might need some further guidance. How to deal with an (uncertain) future in the policy making process is one of the issues that needs to be addressed. This workshop starts with an interactive session to get a better understanding of the level of knowledge and needs regarding foresight studies, followed by the presentations of four different applications of foresight studies. The first one is at the global level from the institute for health metrics and evaluation (IHME) who has a long track record regarding public health data gathering and applying these, for example, to calculate the Global Burden of Disease. Next, EURO-HEALTHY project will present the Scenarios for population health inequalities in 2030 in Europe, partly based on a Web-Delphi process with a multidisciplinary panel. The third presentation will be from Public Health Wales on Futures for Wales which puts future health in the broader perspective of wellbeing. The last presentation will also be a national one, the Public Health foresight study, which has been conducted for more than 2025 years with an update published in 2020. After these presentations, ample time will be reserved for discussion on how these studies could best contribute to better public health policy making. Workshop participants will be informed about the main results of recent foresight studies, allowing them to reflect on these from their own perspective. They will get insight into the approaches and methods used in these recent studies, which may be helpful or inspiring for their own practice. Key messages Public health foresight studies are done more frequently and their findings can influence public health policy making. In this workshop, the methodology and findings of foresight studies at the global, European, and national level will be discussed.