European Public Health NewsMessage from the WHO Regional Director for EuropeHow Ehealth Can Help with Europe's Chronic Diseases Epidemic8th EPH Conference—‘Health in Europe—from Global to Local Policies, Methods and Practices’

Each June a dedicated group of EUPHA members convenes in the city where the next conference will be held to organize the forthcoming programme. The abstracts have been scored, each one by five or six people, and ranked. Then the fun starts. Doubtless there is a computer programme somewhere that can organize abstracts into themes that make sense but we have yet to discover it. In practice, we start with a large pile of pieces of paper, each containing details of what is being proposed. We then spend several hours rearranging those pieces into piles. Then, when we realized that some piles are much bigger than others, we rearrange them into different piles. Eventually, we have created piles of approximately equal size in which all of the abstracts can plausibly be linked. Then we pause for coffee and go back to the piles to rearrange them into individual sessions. More than once, participants have reflected on how this frenetic activity reminds them of what their children do in kindergarten. Somehow, we always managed to create some sort of order out of what initially looks like chaos! This year our task will be more challenging than ever. EUPHA members have obviously had an extremely productive year. We have a record number of submissions, at 1287, over 250 more than in Glasgow. We realize the enormous amount of effort that has gone into preparing these abstracts and the research upon which they are based, so we will look at all possibilities to ensure that those meeting the now high threshold for acceptance can be presented in Milan. Clearly, we can look forward to a fantastic conference, packed with new evidence and ideas, in one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. Marx famously said that ‘the philosophers have simply described the world, our task …