ELISAH

ELISAH - European Linkage of Initiative from Science to Action in Health

The ELISAH project aims to reduce the burden of breast cancer by acting on modifiable risk factors and involving NGOs and patient groups. It will develop different strategies that integrate structural interventions and individual health promotion, and the relationships between risk factors. The project is articulated around studying environmental pollution, the built environment, exposure to unhealthy nutrition, lack of physical activity, as well as alcohol and tobacco use.

The ELISAH project is designed to complement the the joint action on ‘Cancer and other NCDs prevention – action on health determinants’, and aims to fill the gap between the vast amount of published results, the lack of knowledge about the distribution of risk factors in the population and the need for research implementation to translate scientific evidence into population health improvement. The project actions are the following:

1. European-wide gap analysis of national cancer plans, breast cancer rates and risk factor distribution using JRC-ENCR databases
2. “High definition” gap analysis to assess the currently unknown distribution of some important risk factors in women with a diagnosis of breast cancer, based on population-based cancer registries data from the countries participating in the call, Greece, Italy, Spain and Ukraine
3. Health promoting lifestyle interventions using innovative approaches for organisation and tools, easily reproducible in all the EU states which take advantage of existing health facilities, such as mammography services and easily usable digital technologies
4. Improvements to the built environment to promote prevention, in disadvantaged neighbourhoods
5. Increasing awareness of breast cancer risk factors and screening programme participation in Internal Displaced People (IDP) in Ukraine

All these implementations will focus on health inequalities. The action priorities of the health determinants strand that the ELISAH project will implement are twofold:

• lifestyle, considered at an individual and social level,
• and the environment, including both environmental pollution and the built-in environment.

The ELISAH project will consider tobacco use and vaping devices, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, overweight and obesity, alcohol-related harm, the risks associated with breast implants, atmospheric pollution, and built environment elements such as green spaces and bicycle lanes. There will be a special focus on measures aimed at reducing health inequalities in the following vulnerable groups: refugees from Ukraine, Ukraine people living under war conditions, and people living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and areas.