Chronic disease is responsible for the majority of disease and deaths throughout Europe including in Ireland. The rise in chronic disease is increasing demand on health systems worldwide. In Europe, countries currently spend 6% of budgets on health care and this will increase to 9% by 2020 and 14% by 2050 unless governments contain costs. In addition to this increasing demand, there is a widening gap between available resources and healthcare costs. Moreover, there are large and increasing discrepancies within populations with increasing social gradients in health. Across Europe, people with a lower socioeconomic status have a six-year lower life expectancy compared to those with a higher education level with similar findings reported by the ESRI in Ireland. While differences in access to health and social care partly explain these differences, much of the gap is due to differences in exposure to risk factors such as smoking, obesity and physical inactivity resulting in different rates of chronic disease. These preventable lifestyle factors are associated with a disproportionate burden of chronic disease in more deprived populations. There is an urgent need to increase detection and treatment of risk factors to prevent the development of chronic disease among those at risk.
Sláintecare is the 10-year vision of the Irish government to transform health and social care services in Ireland. A major focus of Sláintecare is to promote health in the population by preventing disease. This secondary data analysis project, ‘Evidence for Policies to Prevent Chronic Conditions (EPICC)’ is a partnership between the policy and clinical knowledge users leading the implementation of the vision of Sláintecare and academics from a range of disciplines including Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Pharmacy, Health Economics and Health Services Research with the necessary skills and expertise to exploit existing data providing the evidence base to inform policy and practice.
