thematic dossier
Cardiovascular disease and stroke
Les maladies cardio-neuro-vasculaires regroupent un ensemble de troubles affectant le cœur et les vaisseaux sanguins.
What is Santé publique France's role in the JACARDI project?
Santé publique France has several responsibilities within JACARDI. It serves as the competent authority for France and coordinates JACARDI-France with five other affiliated French entities to ensure that their actions are complementary and consistent.
thematic dossier
JACARDI: Background and Overview
Learn all about the Jacardi project, its goals, and its impact on public health.
Beyond providing a better understanding of the burden of disease, JACARDI aligns with Santé publique France’s priorities to take into account all determinants of health, including social and economic factors. JACARDI will help develop and enhance the components related to “reducing the burden of disease and social inequalities in health”—a key priority for the agency—and will enable the development of specific approaches tailored to vulnerable populations. JACARDI will pay particular attention to barriers to access to care and information related to socioeconomic status, ethnic origin, education, and gender.
Santé publique France thus plays multiple roles:
- the agency serves as the coordinating authority for France, overseeing the activities of various affiliated entities: Nantes University Hospital, Tours University Hospital, Toulouse University Hospital, Lyon University Hospital, and Saint-Brieuc–Paimpol–Tréguier Hospital;
- it leads the working group on health literacy, ensuring that projects are aligned with the WHO’s Ophelia method;
- and co-leads the initiative on registries and data, aimed at improving data surveillance and sharing.
In addition, Santé publique France is directly involved in numerous projects, including:
- health literacy interventions targeting specific populations, such as women with gestational hypertension or the general adult population;
- data analysis and the development of algorithms to identify types of diabetes and track health outcomes;
- the creation of screening tools to identify individuals at high risk for diabetes.
The prevention and management of cardiovascular disease and diabetes do not rely solely on the availability of health care. They also depend on individuals’ ability to access information, understand it, and use it to make informed decisions. However, challenges related to health literacy particularly affect the most vulnerable populations and are a major driver of social inequalities in health.
WP6 was designed to make health literacy a strategic lever for improving prevention, early detection, and quality of life. Its goal is to analyze existing European initiatives to identify gaps, and then to develop tools and environments that are “health literate” (that promote health literacy). This approach is being implemented through the rollout of pilot projects, rooted in local realities and evaluated using the OPHELIA methodology recognized by the WHO. The results will enable the development of a roadmap for scaling up across Europe.
An approach based on “best practices”
JACARDI draws on interventions that have demonstrated their effectiveness, transferability, and potential for impact. The challenge is not merely to catalog these practices, but also to identify the conditions for their success (governance, funding, stakeholder engagement) to facilitate their adaptation to other national contexts.
The Key Role of Santé publique France
As the leader of WP6, Santé publique France provides scientific and operational coordination for the 25 pilot projects being conducted in 13 countries, covering five themes: the general population/adults, diabetes, pregnant women, vulnerable populations, and children and adolescents.
The agency leads the network of partners, ensures the technical consistency of the work, and coordinates with the other Work Packages, while making equity a cross-cutting priority. In this way, WP6 helps build health systems that are more accessible, more understandable, and, ultimately, more equitable for all European citizens.
Key tasks led by the agency
Task 6.1 – Mapping Health Literacy Activities
Axis 1: Contextual analysis of health literacy based on a survey conducted in 32 Member States to gather detailed information on existing actions and programs (strategic frameworks, intersectoral collaboration, equity, funding, and service delivery).
Axis 2: A literature review to identify:
the contexts and population groups targeted by health literacy initiatives;
literacy initiatives that have been implemented and evaluated and have had an impact on the burden of disease associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Task 6.5 – Evaluation and Roadmap
This task, in collaboration with the Portuguese Ministry of Health, aims to:evaluate the pilot projects using key performance indicators (KPIs), the CFIR framework, and the WHO’s ExpandNet model;
develop a roadmap to systematically measure the results and impact of WP6, taking into account the complexity of the challenges associated with implementing these projects.
Cardiovascular diseases and diabetes are major public health challenges in terms of morbidity and mortality in Europe, but the available data remain fragmented, heterogeneous, and difficult to compare across countries. WP7 aims to improve the availability, quality, accessibility, and use of data to support health policies based on robust and equitable evidence.
Santé publique France, in collaboration with the Madrid Regional Health Agency (SERMAS), conducted an analysis of data systems and indicators in 20 European countries. This study highlighted three major challenges:
data governance that is insufficiently structured to measure social inequalities in health,
data sharing limited by the lack of common standards,
insufficient consideration of patients’ perspectives (PROMs and PREMs).
This work led to the development of a harmonized framework of European indicators across the entire continuum of care.
It provides standardized definitions, an operational catalog of indicators, and concrete technical recommendations, enabling improved comparability between countries, the evaluation of public policies, and better identification of inequalities. This is a key step toward collective data intelligence in Europe, serving the needs of policymakers, healthcare professionals, and patients.
Diabetes
thematic dossier
Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder characterized by chronic hyperglycemia resulting from a deficiency in either insulin secretion, insulin action, or both.
