This project is designed to make a major and practical contribution to implementation of the European Action Plan on Environment and Health, the European Environment and Health Strategy and the European Integrated Environment and Health Monitoring and Response System, and, more generally, to assist in achieving the goals of the Environmental Action Plan.

It is based on a simple but powerful precept: one that has in recent years repeatedly emerged from initiatives such as the SCALE procedure and the formative stages of GMES. This is that, if scientific support for policy on environment and health is to be improved, the immediate priority is not so much for further detailed studies, investigating individual causal associations between environment and health, but rather to improve the use made of the datai and knowledge that we already have in order to obtain more integrated assessments of risks and impacts. In this context, three key gaps need to be addressed:

• data and knowledge are spread across disciplines, through different networks and in different databases – tools, methods and collaborative research are needed to bring together and link these different areas of data and knowledge more effectively to inform integrated assessments;
• in many areas, a large gap between science and policy remains – methods are needed to bridge this gap by translating the science that exists into information that is of direct relevance to policy;
• in specific contexts, there are key gaps in data or knowledge that break the continuity of our current understanding and undermine its utility for policy support–targeted research