4.F. Workshop: Supporting present policy making to address future challenges: foresight and public health policies

The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on health showed that we were not prepared for uncertain health events and its uncertain consequences and impact in society. To be prepared for the uncertainty of the future, foresight provides a systematic, participatory, and vision-building process that explores the future to anticipate trends and support present-day actions. Foresight explores possible futures and their impact on society and population health. Foresight can enable better informed present-day decision-making and thereby better short-term and long-term preparedness in European Union (EU) Member States (MS) and the European region for possible future health crises. With foresight, experts and policy makers can explore long-term decisions that need to be made in the present to be prepared for the future. Using foresight to formulate long-term decisions can allow setting priorities, planning budgets and spending to address health threats and challenges, and learning how to cope with challenges while keeping resilient and sustainable health systems. In this workshop, we will focus on how foresight can be integrated into the policy cycle to support policy makers to be prepared for the future. It will provide an outlook on how a foresight exercise can provide insights into future challenges to provide recommendations and explore policy implications. The workshop will start with an interactive Mentimeter session to get a better view on how the audience is familiar with foresight in the policy cycle. Then, a brief presentation is given as introduction to foresight and its role in policy making. This is followed by a presentation of a Foresight study that provides recommendations for policy makers to address present and future challenges related to mental health. The second foresight study provides an example on how digitalization in primary healthcare can address present and future challenges. The last presentation gives an overview on the role that foresight can play in the policy cycle at different stages of the foresight exercise when discussing the use of personalized medicine in cancer prevention. The workshop will be concluded by a discussion with the four presenters on the lessons learned regarding foresight and policy making. KEY MESSAGES: • Foresight provides a systematic and participatory process to support policy making towards sustainable and resilient health systems. • Foresight can enable better informed present-day decision-making towards better short- and long-term preparedness in the European region and its Member States for possible future health challenges.