Core Initiatives
The Exposome Alliance aims at positioning the exposome at the heart of Europe’s future health, research and prevention agenda:
(A) launching a Mission Exposome to transform life-course research and innovation; (B) building a European Exposome Data Space; and (C) establishing an EU Prevention Action Plan to address the root causes of non-communicable diseases across all policies.
The objectives of the Alliance are fully aligned with the ambitions of the next Multiannual Financial Framework and should be firmly anchored within EU health spending under the new budget, while Priority B should be supported through the EU’s digital leadership and data infrastructure envelopes. Together, these three pillars provide a coherent framework for making prevention, data and exposome science a core driver of EU’s health, competitiveness and societal resilience.
01/Support research on exposome and launch a Mission Exposome
To place prevention at the centre of European health policy, the EU should establish a Mission Exposome under Horizon Europe. With a dedicated €1 billion research budget and a 10-million-person longitudinal cohort across Member States, this initiative would generate the most comprehensive evidence ever produced on how environmental, chemical, biological and social exposures shape health across the life course.
A Mission Exposome would position Europe at the forefront of global research, alongside major international programmes, while strengthening the EU’s competitiveness in health, biotechnology and artificial intelligence. Combined with the Genome of Europe initiative, it would create an integrated knowledge base linking genetic and environmental determinants of health – turning cutting-edge science into actionable prevention.
02/Build a European Exposome Data Space for Prevention
Effective prevention requires connected data. The Exposome Alliance calls for the creation of a European Exposome Data Space to securely and interoperably link health, environmental, social and behavioural data across the EU.
Building on the European Health Data Space and the EU Life Sciences Strategy, this initiative would make exposomic data visible, usable and actionable. By enabling Member States to connect their infrastructures in a harmonised way, Europe can better understand how real-world exposures interact with biological and genomic factors – improving risk identification, guiding public health interventions and strengthening evidence-based policymaking.
03/A common prevention pillar to strengthen prevention
Europe has strong disease-specific strategies, but it lacks a coordinated framework to address the lifelong, combined exposures driving all major non-communicable diseases. A Common Prevention Pillar would strengthen coherence across existing EU initiatives and better support Member States in delivering effective prevention policies.
Using the exposome approach, this pillar would improve coordination between policies on health, environment, chemicals, food systems, urban planning, transport and social inclusion – while respecting national competences. By aligning instruments under the next Multiannual Financial Framework and reinforcing implementation support, the EU can maximise the impact of current strategies and move decisively towards a preventive, cross-sectoral health model.
europeanexposomeforum.eu 