Gaining health : analysis of policy development in European ...

Chapter 4
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public health services, for preparing an annual public health
report to be presented to Parliament and, in collaboration
with the MHSS, for formulating the National Action Plan for
Public Health. When the Council is fully operational it will
decide, together with the National School of Public Health,
on the data and indicators to be included in the new Health
Map.
The MHSS appears to have little impact on the direction
or content of research in the health field. The focus
of research in the academic field depends largely on the
personal interests of individual experts, frequently influenced
by their participation in international studies and the
availability of international funding. National funding through
KE.ELP.NO appears to be affected by agreements between
its medical members.
Although, compared with other EU Member States, Greece
spends a small proportion of GDP on research and development,
the annual growth in this amount has been rapid in
recent years, as has the annual increase in scientific publications.
The country is said to be in a “catching up phase” as
a result of decisions of the European Council of Ministers
in Lisbon and Barcelona (42). The demands of EU research
programmes could be conducive to gradually improving the
situation in Greece.
In 1998, the Greek Social Data Bank was created by
the National Centre for Social Research to support and
promote social empirical research and to disseminate the
results. There is as yet, however, no strong health focus.
3.4. Training
Except where medical schools have developed the concept
of community medicine, as in Crete, health professionals
are not considered to be adequately prepared for health
promotion and disease prevention. Most health promotion
programmes so far have been staffed by physicians and untrained
support personnel, with the result that they focused
mainly on hygiene and medicine. 13
More recently, new programmes offered by the medical
schools, the National School of Public Health and the
Technical Educational Institutes have allowed people from
various disciplines to study health-related issues, facilitating
a move away from the previous strictly medical viewpoint
of health. The commitment of the MHSS and other government
agencies for the effective utilization of such personnel
will be crucial to the development of a multisectoral
approach to health.
There is still an uneasy relationship in the public sector
towards professional evaluation. The administrative and
scientific committees and councils responsible for the
operation of the National Centre for Public Administration
and Self-Government of the Ministry for Internal Affairs
are heavily dominated by union representatives. In the past
two years, even members of the academic community –
including students – have been vociferously against various
evaluation proposals.
A law is currently being drawn up for the mandatory
training of directors and unit heads of public services, and
experience from France and the United Kingdom has been
requested.
Insufficient knowledge of foreign languages certainly restricts
access to developments on the international level,
and an improvement in such skills would go some way
towards remedying this.
3.5. Communication and public information/
involvement
Awareness-building campaigns in relation to NCD and their
risk factors take the form of health education pamphlets
and television spots rather than interventions (combining,
13
A. Christoforidou, unpublished data, 2005.
Case studies: policy development in countries for tackling noncommunicable diseases