欧洲疾控中心-传染病预防和控制的未来挑战（英）-2025_36页_2mb

Future Challenges for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control: A Strategic Foresight Summary

Core Content

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) conducted a comprehensive strategic foresight process in 2022 to enhance preparedness and resilience against future infectious disease threats. This initiative aimed to identify key drivers of change, explore potential future scenarios, and propose strategic actions to address these challenges. The report outlines a multi-method approach involving expert consultations, scenario development, and back-casting exercises to guide long-term public health planning.

Main Viewpoints

The foresight process emphasized the importance of:

• Anticipating change: Public health institutions must look beyond their immediate scope to understand the broader implications of global trends.
• Interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches: The process involved input from over 245 experts and stakeholders, including both internal and external participants.
• Strategic foresight as a tool: It is used to explore possible future conditions, identify risks, and design resilient, forward-looking actions.

Key Information

1. Key Drivers of Change

The following are the key drivers of change identified, which are expected to influence the future landscape of infectious disease prevention and control:

• Inequalities in access to healthcare
• International migration and travel
• Climate change
• New distribution of wealth and influence
• Impact of ageing populations
• New modes of learning and communication
• Data collection, security, analysis and artificial intelligence (AI)
• Urbanisation globally and in the EU
• Pressure on natural resources and ecologies
• Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)

These drivers are categorized as macro-drivers, which are large-scale social, technological, ecological, economic, and political trends. They are derived from 14 global megatrends identified by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC).

2. Threat Scenarios

Six threat scenarios were developed to explore possible future conditions and their implications for infectious disease prevention and control:

• Scenario I - A united EU in a polycrisis world
• Scenario II - Building back nature
• Scenario III - Divide and prejudice
• Scenario IV - Public health in private hands
• Scenario V - Urban dominion and digital society
• Scenario VI - A patchwork society

Each scenario outlines different operational conditions and challenges, including the impact of climate change, societal fragmentation, and governance structures.

3. Strategic Actions

Based on the foresight process, the report proposes several strategic actions to improve preparedness and resilience:

• Strengthen external communications and outreach: To build public trust and ensure effective dissemination of critical health information.
• Develop data expertise and best practices: To prepare for various data availability and accessibility scenarios.
• Budget for and create cross-organisation working groups: In areas such as climate change, health economics, AI, and surveillance.
• Engage with localised priority populations: To enhance trust, access data, and ensure community-specific responses.
• Value international institutional cooperation: To support peer organisations like WHO and other CDCs in mutual assistance and preparedness.

These actions were selected through a rigorous process involving expert interviews, scenario wind-tunneling, and peer review.

Structure of the Foresight Process

The foresight process was structured as follows:

1. Horizon scanning: Identified global megatrends and their underlying drivers.
2. Expert focus groups and Delphi survey: Prioritized and refined the drivers of change.
3. Driver trajectory analysis: Assessed possible future pathways for each driver.
4. Scenario development: Created narrative threat scenarios for 2040 based on driver interactions.
5. Scenario vetting and back-casting: Identified necessary steps to build a resilient ECDC for each scenario.
6. Strategic action selection and refinement: Finalized a list of 27 strategic actions through further analysis and peer review.

Conclusions and Implications

The report concludes that future infectious disease prevention and control will face a complex and evolving landscape influenced by multiple drivers. To prepare for these challenges, ECDC and its partners must:

• Strengthen communication and outreach.
• Enhance data literacy and AI integration.
• Build cross-organisational collaboration.
• Engage with vulnerable and priority populations.
• Foster international cooperation.

The findings are intended for internal use at ECDC but also provide insights for external stakeholders to improve preparedness and resilience in the European public health arena.

References and Appendices

• The report includes figures and tables that support the analysis.
• Annex 1 lists acknowledgements and contributors.
• The suggested citation is provided for reference.

This summary highlights the strategic foresight approach used by ECDC to anticipate and prepare for future infectious disease threats, emphasizing the need for resilience, collaboration, and innovation in public health systems.