The members of the European Network of Workplace Health Promotion (ENWHP) work together towards the vision `healthy employees in healthy organisations`. They are committed to the mission of developing and promoting good workplace health practice, which in turn contributes to a high level of health protection and sustainable economic and social development in Europe.
This vision is part of a broader vision at European policy level: The EU Lisbon Agenda identifies the goal for this decade to develop the EU region `to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion`. In this context workplace health promotion is part of the concept of quality in work with impacts on productivity, employment and social cohesion.

Healthy work impacts on the quality of working life and non-working life, and contributes to the level of health protection of communities and populations. It also impacts on microeconomic performance (productivity and innovation) and macroeconomic performance (efficiency of the health care, welfare and education sector, competitiveness of businesses at company, national and European level). Healthy work finally also contributes to social cohesion.

Healthy work is organised through processes both inside and outside enterprises that are based on the general management cycle, and specifically include infrastructure building and marketing.

With its vision and mission, ENWHP contributes especially to the reduction of health inequalities, to the development of a European health information system and to improving important health determinants with impacts on all relevant settings in working and non-working life.
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FASE project aims at reducing the impact of harmful and hazardous alcohol consumption on the economy (e.g. reduce absenteeism, drinking during working hours, working with a hangover and unemployment) through building capacity at the country and European levels, by collecting best practices in work-place strategies to, by networking, evaluating and collecting best practices on well-resourced community mobilization and intervention projects, involving different sectors and partners to create safer drinking environments; and by supporting development of best practice in advertising, self regulation and monitoring.
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Chronic conditions and diseases have a substantial impact on the labour market and working life. This urges the need for effective job retention and workplace-based return-to-work (RTW) strategies and interventions, as this is a means of preventing employees with a chronic illness of moving into disability or early retirement pensions.

The proposed project will contribute towards the implementation of effective workplace health practices within corporate policies of enterprises in Europe, aimed at retaining and encouraging the return-to-work (RTW) of chronically ill employees. Comprehensive workplace health management and promotion (WHP) offers an effective approach combining individual and organisational interventions supporting employees with chronic conditions. Ultimately this may lead to a better quality of life and functioning, and an improvement of social economic outcomes.
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The project aims at developing and establishing an EU integrated strategy for safeguarding the health of travellers and crew of passenger ships and for preventing the international and trans-national spread of diseases through ships.
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In line with the Community action in the field of health (2008-1013), the conference will create an opportunity to raise awareness about the impact of chronic diseases on the labour market and the social security and exchange and improve knowledge and cooperation of all stakeholders about the possibilities to retain workers with a chronic disease, or facilitate their return-to-work (RTW).

The conference will contribute to a wider dissemination of good practices on job retention/early intervention/return-to-work workplace health strategies and interventions. It will present state-of-the-art research findings and present guidelines as a guidance to set up comprehensive workplace health strategies and interventions for the retention/return-to-work of chronically ill employees.

Furthermore it will discuss the role of the policymakers, and all other stakeholders from the public health and workplace health field.


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