Sweden as a role model: New forum calls for a fresh start in German prevention policy
The newly founded Forum for Evidence-Based Preventative Health (FEBPH) made its public debut with a parliamentary evening event in Berlin. Thereby kicking off a more evidence-based debate on prevention in Germany.
Renowned Swedish public health expert Johan Carlson explained why Sweden is regarded as a global role model: through a focus on evidence-based measures, reliable health data, and prevention programs that facilitate healthy behaviors in everyday life.
Prof. Dr. Eva Grill explained why Germany lags behind in this regard despite strong research and why prevention must be understood more strongly in this country as a structural task of the state.
Berlin, June 12, 2026 – While Germany engages in discussions about prevention, Sweden demonstrates how prevention in everyday life, supported by evidence and trust, leads to longer and healthier lives for people. Germany could learn a thing or two from this. With this message, the newly founded Forum for Evidence-Based Preventative Health (FEBPH) launched its work on June 11, 2026, in Berlin. At a parliamentary evening event, representatives from politics, science, and the healthcare sector gathered to discuss what Germany can learn from Sweden’s prevention policies.
Kickoff for new forum and for a new debate on prevention
The evening marked the launch of the FEBPH. The nonprofit organization aims to bridge the gap between science, the media, and health policy and bring evidence-based prevention more strongly into the political discourse. The starting point is a key observation: Prevention in Germany fails not primarily due to a lack of funding, but because of a failure to implement scientific findings and recommendations, which rarely reach many people in their daily lives. “Sweden was not a random choice for this evening. The country provides what is arguably the most compelling international evidence of what happens when evidence-based prevention is consistently understood as an ongoing political priority: higher life expectancy, more healthy years of life, and greater trust in institutions. This makes the country a suitable reference point for a factual, solution-oriented debate on the future of prevention in Germany,” said Prof. Dr. Frank-Ulrich Fricke, Senior Scientific Advisor at the FEBPH.
Dr. Stephan Pilsinger, who, as a member of the Bundestag (German Parliament), served as the event’s patron, stated: “Prevention is a crucial foundation for enabling people to live healthy lives for longer.” For this reason, we want to work with our coalition partner to initiate the amendment of the Federal Prevention Act. For such a law to be successful, the measures it outlines must be evaluated for their evidence base. Looking to other countries, particularly Sweden, can serve as a guide for political implementation.”
Why Sweden is considered a role model
In his keynote address, Johan Carlson, founding director of the Swedish Public Health Agency (2014–2021), explained why Sweden is now regarded as a model for effective prevention. The country has not defined health solely as an individual responsibility but has embedded it in people’s daily lives through political and institutional structures: free school meals, tax-free employer wellness budgets, reliable health data, and an infrastructure that facilitates physical activity often make prevention the obvious choice there. “Some measures might be considered unfeasible or too expensive in this country. Here, we advocate for an evidence-based prevention policy that examines possible measures based on existing evidence and then assesses their feasibility,” Prof. Dr. Fricke further comments on the forum’s initiative.
The German Paradox: Excellent Research, Structural Gaps
Prof. Dr. Eva Grill, Professor of Epidemiology at LMU Munich and former Chair of the German Society of Epidemiology, contrasted the Swedish model with the reality in Germany. Although Germany boasts excellent research and one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the world, people here spend significantly fewer years in good health than in Sweden. The cause lies not in a lack of knowledge, but in the gap between evidence and policy implementation.
Grill identified two structural shortcomings: Germany lacks standardized, high-resolution real-time health data that would allow the success of prevention efforts to be measured in the short term. Furthermore, prevention is often viewed as an individual responsibility, along the lines of “eat better, exercise more”, rather than as a government responsibility to make healthy choices easier in everyday life. As a result, socially disadvantaged groups in particular are systematically less well reached.
Call to Action: Germany Needs Prevention Based on the Swedish Model
From the FEBPH’s perspective, Sweden demonstrates the standards against which a modern German prevention policy must be measured: scientific evidence, independent institutions, reliable health data, and low-threshold services that actually reach people in their daily lives. The Forum therefore calls for prevention to be understood as a structural responsibility of the state and not as a moral appeal to the individual. The launch event in Berlin is intended to mark the beginning of an ongoing debate on this issue.
