By dean of research Jochen Mierau
Your Majesties, Your Excellencies, colleagues, dear guests,
It is a great honour to speak with you today about the future of health in our two countries, which share a common ambition to protect the health of current and future generations.
In the next few minutes, I will highlight two shared challenges: health disparities and a changing disease landscape. And I will show how Japanese and Dutch researchers are already working together to address them.
For our own societies, and for the global community.
Japan and the Netherlands share some of the longest life-expectancies in the world. Strong healthcare systems, sound public health policies and strong communities have allowed our citizens to live long, healthy lives.
Health is not only valuable in itself, it is also a foundation of our prosperity. Without healthy people, societies cannot thrive and economies cannot grow.
But when we look more closely, two challenges emerge.
First, not all our citizens are benefiting equally from the gains in health and longevity.
In the Netherlands and Japan, the least well off live shorter lives and spend more years in poorer health than those who are better off.
The challenge before us is not simply to add years to life, but to add life to years. More healthy years - for everyone!
Second, both our countries are experiencing a shift toward chronic illness as the main burden of disease.
Conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, kidney disease and dementia are becoming more prevalent. And with advances in detection and treatment, even cancer is increasingly becoming a chronic condition.
While we often look toward healthcare to address health challenges, health is determined by much broader factors - the society we live in.
Healthcare plays a vital role in treating illness, but it is only part of the story. Much of the progress in longevity and population health has come from changes outside of healthcare. Clean water and sanitation, safer roads and food, safer working conditions and economic security - these are the foundations of modern health.
To address these challenges - persistent health inequalities and a growing burden of chronic disease - we need to continue to look beyond healthcare. Not only in policy, but especially in research.
Health research needs to move into society - measuring health where it is shaped and sustained.
Our countries share unique research infrastructures that allow us to do exactly that. The Tohoku Medical Megabank in Japan and Lifelines in the Netherlands, are large population-based cohort studies and biobanks that follow generations of citizens in their natural environments - where they live and grow.
Each includes over a hundred thousand people, across multiple generations. Together, they provide unprecedented insight into how health develops - and how it can be protected.
Building on these shared strengths, Lifelines and the Megabank signed a strategic alliance in the presence of the Dutch Ministry of Health during the successful World Expo in Osaka last year.
Research from the two is already delivering crucial insights.
For example, we see that events like the Great East Japan Earthquake or the mining-induced frequent earthquakes in the Northern Netherlands have substantial psychological consequences for communities.
We also see that health differences between social groups are already visible in the body long before they develop into chronic diseases.
Such studies, and many others, are helping us to understand how health develops across environments and across groups.
The collaboration is also visible in exchange of researchers. Just last week colleagues who are visiting the UMCG from Tohoku shared the first results on how health is passed on between generations in the Netherlands and Japan.
Together, these efforts are not only transforming our understanding of health. They are helping us to address the modern health challenges - health disparities and an increasing burden of disease.
Building on our four centuries of friendship, the collaboration between our countries brings together science, policy and people in a shared commitment to better health.
In doing so we are not only contributing to healthier lives, but also to stronger societies and resilient economies - more healthy years, for everyone, in both our countries.
Thank you very much.
