Bucharest 2019
The 2019 Conference in Bucharest, Romania was the 4th time ENSP organised such an activity. This time almost 400 European and international participants from 50 countries attended ENSP-SRP Conference 2019 in Bucharest. The 4th edition of the ENSP Conference was held under the title “Tomorrow’s sustainable development starts now – time to accelerate tobacco control!”.
Bucharest was chosen as a location considering also the fact that Romania held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the first half of 2019, and healthcare was emphasized as one of the core priorities of the Presidency.
The Conference had high-level political presence. The Conference’s first plenary session was opened by a special guest and speaker – the European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Vytenis Andriukaitis. The ENSP Conference was the ONLY health related event during Romanian the Presidency of the Council of the EU, including official Council meetings, that had the EU Health Commissioner present. On the other hand, NO Romanian Government representatives attended the Conference.
The Conference programme featured more than 44 sessions on a variety of topics including:
- Tobacco and Health
- Human Rights and Tobacco
- Youth and tobacco
- Second-hand smoke exposure
- Progress on Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and Tobacco ProductsDirective (TPD) implementation
- International/national tobacco control activities
- European Projects on Tobacco Control,
- Tobacco Control Policies (Taxation and Illicit Trade; Tobacco Advertising Promotion andSponsorship);
- Tobacco Dependence Treatment (FCTC Article 14)
- The role of health professionals (incl. nurses) in tobacco control
- E-cigarettes and novel tobacco products150 abstracts were accepted as oral and poster presentations and were published as a Special Issue in the official ENSP Journal – Tobacco Prevention and Cessation. The programme ran in 1 plenary and 4 parallel rooms over 3 days. The Conference included sessions in national languages and offered translation for the plenary session. Within the core programme, 3 project groups (JATC, EUREST-PLUS, TackSHS) held symposia during the Conference days presenting projects outcomes to the Conference attendees. Conference participants had a chance to take part, on pre-registration basis, in 3 workshops organised by ENSP’s partners: Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK Capacity Building and Communications workshop: Mapping and Exposing Tobacco Industry Front Groups and Allies in Europe), ASH US (Tobacco and Human Rights) and University of Illinois at Chicago (Tobacco Tax Policies in the European Unuion). Both were attended by over 30 participants and provided an opportunity to develop and advance their advocacy skills.