Public health and epidemiological research: a blind spot among the European Union priorities?

The first projects supported by the European Union (EU) Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) of research1 are about to start while calls for applications are still open. FP6 is placed within the ‘Research’ Directorate of the European Commission (the propositional and executive organ of the EU) and formally covers the quinquennium 2002–2006, with actual project implementation in the years 2004–2006. The programme has available funds of 17.5 billion Euros, a 17% nominal increase in respect to the previous quinquennial programme (FP5), equivalent to a 1.5–2% annual rate of increase in real terms. This level of funding represents roughly 5% of the public spending in non-military research by the 15 EU countries, and approximately the same percentage holds within the segment of life sciences and health research. This would be far from negligible if it was selectively targeted on collaborative projects to boost genuinely innovative research, to study specific European phenomena (ranging from geological to historical and social), and to improve research competence where defective. Two of the seven major priority themes (Table) of the FP6, and some minor topics within the other themes, are devoted to the life sciences: ‘Genomics and biotechnologies for health’, allocated 2.25 billion Euros, almost 13% of the total, and ‘Food quality and safety’, granted 685 million Euros, nearly 4% of the total. Most funds are intended to support ‘integrated projects’ and ‘networks of excellence’, both forms of activities being designed to foster extensive collaborations within broad and complex projects receiving funds of the order of 5, 10, or 20 million Euros over 3–5 years. This contrasts sharply with previous EU Framework Programmes where the typical funding in the life sciences areas has been of the order of 0.5 to (uncommonly) 1.5 million Euros provided mostly to catalyse collaboration and networking on specific and focussed topics. While shifting priority from catalytic to substantive funding is a positive development, the wisdom of concentrating resources on mega-projects, cumbersome and potentially rigid, has been questioned in some quarters.2,3 It has also been argued2 that the whole FP6 is dominated by ‘overt socioeconomic objectives’, a feature discouraging the participation of first-rate basic scientists. Population-based health research: a hardly visible priority