EUSPR 2026 Keynote speakers

17th EUSPR Conference – 15 to 18 September 2026, Dublin, Ireland

Our conference theme  “Innovation in Prevention to Support Health Equity” embraces this perspective by acknowledging scientific advances (e.g., regarding technology like AI, novel approaches to personalised prevention) and conceptual innovation (e.g., linking climate and health, one health and planetary health) while being mindful of the risks and chances for equitable prevention for all. In prevention science, an investigation of the foundations of safe and healthy living is paramount, and this can only be achieved by addressing systemic inequities and utilising innovations in a beneficial way.

Diarmuid O’Donovan
Health Service ExecutiveKeynote Speaker

Health equity and innovation in prevention

    Orla Doyle

    University College Dublin    Keynote Speaker

    The Effectiveness of Early Life Prevention Programmes: Evidence from the Preparing for Life Trial

      Paulo Santos

      University of Porto      Keynote Speaker


      Literacy as a structural innovation: the key to health equity

        Florence Francis-Oliviero
        Institut de Recherche et Documentation en Economie de la Santé        Invited panelist

        Panel discussion

        John Toumbourou

        Deakin University        Invited panelist


        Panel discussion

          Pamela R. Buckley

          University of Denver          Invited panelist

          Panel discussion

          Keynote SpeakerShort BiographyTitleAbstract
          Diarmuid O’DonovanProf Diarmuid O’Donovan is Director of National Health Improvement with the Health Service Executive. He leads a team focused on prevention, addressing health inequalities and partnerships for the wider determinants of health. From 2019-2023 he was Professor of Global Health at Queen’s University Belfast, and from 2005 Director of Public Health in HSE West and Senior Lecturer in Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Galway. He trained in general practice and in public health. He has lived and worked in several countries in Africa. His main research and teaching interests relate to sustainable development and health equity and inclusion, locally and globally.Health equity and innovation in preventionThe case for long-term sustainable investment in prevention has never been stronger.
          There are new opportunities for equity focused prevention, integrating the principles of health promotion with those of planetary health, rights-based approaches and community co-design. We need to expand our understanding of how state, market and civil actors influence health equity and how to work better across complex systems to improve the social, commercial and structural determinants of health.
          Learning from recent experiences this presentation will consider how area and place-basedapproaches can improve prevention for better health and equity, and some of the challenges including ensuring community participation and how we measure prevention and equity. We need to see more clearly how investing social, civic and cultural institutions enables prevention, early intervention and action on the wider determinants of health. New partnerships such as across health, climate, arts and culture will develop public health policy and practice.
          Orla DoyleOrla Doyle is a Professor of Economics at the University College Dublin (UCD) School of Economics, and a research associate at the UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy. Her research focuses on the importance of early life conditions in shaping later life outcomes and the use of experimental designs to identify the effectiveness of interventions to ameliorate poverty. Specifically, she has developed, led, and consolidated a large research programme dedicated to evaluating the effectiveness of early childhood intervention programmes. Her most significant research contribution is the evaluation of the Preparing for Life which is the longest running experimental intervention of a parenting programme in Europe.  She has generated over €2M in research funding and has published over 50 academic articles across multiple disciplines.  She is past Director of the UCD Childhood and Human Development Research Centre and President of the Irish Economics Association.The Effectiveness of Early Life Prevention Programmes: Evidence from the Preparing for Life TrialParents play a significant role in nurturing the health and development of their children. Children exposed to adverse prenatal and postnatal environments typically experience poorer health, education, and labour market outcomes in the long run. Intervening early in life in preventative programmes to eradicate or compensate for early deficits is becoming an increasingly accepted strategy. Such investments are considered efficient from both a biological and an economic perspective. For the last 18 years, Prof. Doyle has been conducting a randomised control trial of the Preparing for Life programme in Ireland. The intervention is based on the premise that investing in intensive parenting supports will permanently alter children’s health and development. The study randomly allocated pregnant women to receive fortnightly home visits, baby massage sessions, and group-based parenting classes from pregnancy until age five (high treatment) or a control group (low treatment). The PFL cohort was assessed eight times during the trial, and at follow-up at age 9 and 14. To date, over 25 papers on the trial have been published. The results demonstrate that the programme was effective in boosting children’s cognitive skills, with smaller effects on some dimensions of health and socio-emotional skills. The most recent follow-up at age 14 found that the programme has a sustained and long-term effect on children’s cognitive development, with large effect sizes of 0.70 SDs. Significant effects were also found on working memory, attention, educational expectations, and children’s waist-to-height ratio. PFL is one of the few experimental early life interventions programmes in Europe that tracks participants into adolescence and finds evidence that the intervention continues to have a significant impact on important dimensions of children’s development ten years after the programme ended.
          Paulo Santos

          Paulo Santos, MD, PhD, is a General and Family Physician and Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine and General Practice at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto, Portugal. He is a Senior Researcher at RISE‑Health@RISE (former CINTESIS), where he coordinates the Primary Health Care Research Group. His academic and clinical work focuses on prevention, health services research, health literacy, equity, and the organization of primary care. He has authored over 99 peer‑reviewed articles and serves as Editor‑in‑Chief of the Portuguese Journal of Family and General Medicine and as editor for international journals. Actively engaged in civic and policy spheres, he has contributed to national advisory boards and local governance, advocating for health literacy as a structural determinant of health equity.

          		Literacy as a structural innovation: the key to health equityCurrent technological advances and expanded access to preventive interventions offer a genuine opportunity to alter the epidemiological trajectory of non‑communicable chronic diseases. Evidence‑based screening programmes, effective pharmacological prevention, digital health tools, and lifestyle interventions are widely available and increasingly sophisticated. Yet, despite these developments, preventable health inequalities persist, driven less by limitations in innovation than by constraints in individual adoption and sustained adherence.
          No preventive strategy, however well designed, can be effective if people do not engage with it. Across domains such as lifestyle modification, participation in screening programmes, and long‑term medication use, adherence remains the critical bottleneck of prevention. This keynote argues that addressing this gap requires a fundamental shift in how literacy is conceptualised, moving from the mere provision of information to a structural capacity that activates behaviour and enables concrete action.
          Literacy is often approached as an educational outcome or framed as a deficit located in individuals who fail to comply. In contrast, I propose literacy as a structural innovation, shaped by political choices, institutional design, and community environments that either enable or constrain people’s ability to translate knowledge into meaningful decisions. Information alone does not change behaviour. Action requires understanding that is contextual, negotiated, and usable within the realities of everyday life.
          Primary health care and preventive services function as a stress test for literacy. Health‑related decisions are made under conditions of uncertainty, asymmetries of power, and competing social pressures. When systems are complex, time‑compressed, or cognitively demanding, preventive innovations disproportionately benefit those with greater social, digital, and cultural capital, thereby reinforcing inequity.
          I defend literacy as a cross‑cutting determinant of life, activated in health but equally relevant to digital, financial, and civic domains. By repositioning literacy as a collective responsibility and a prerequisite for behavioural change, innovation in prevention can move beyond access and technology towards equitable adoption, sustained engagement, and meaningful impact on population health.
          Florence Francis-OliveiroFlorence Francis-Oliviero, MD, PhD, is a social epidemiologist specializing in health inequalities, prevention, and health services research. Her work explores how healthcare settings and health interventions can act as drivers of equity—or, conversely, contribute to the production and reproduction of social inequalities in health.Her current research includes projects on implicit bias in healthcare and interventional research to improve health literacy. She is also a member of the French High Council for Public Health (Haut Conseil de la santé publique).Panel discussionHealth equity and innovation in prevention
           
          John ToumbourouProfessor John Toumbourou is the Chair in Health Psychology at Deakin University, Australia. He is the Co-Leader of Intervention Science in the Deakin University Lifespan Institute. he has published over 310 peer-refereed papers, which have over 23,000 citations (h-index = 79) (https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=aNMRlOUAAAAJ). He is a prominent researcher and social advocate in areas related to positive youth development and the prevention of alcohol and drug problems, and family violence. His research and advocacy led to national reductions in youth alcohol and drug use across Australia and the establishment of the tobacco prevention movement in Timor Leste. In 2023 he received the Presidential Award for lifetime contribution to prevention science research from the Society for Prevention Research.Panel discussionHealth equity and innovation in prevention
          Pamela R. BuckleyPamela R. Buckley, PhD, is an Associate Research Professor at the University of Denver (USA). Her work focuses on strengthening evidence systems for social policy and practice, with particular attention to how research can inform decision-making across diverse contexts. Her scholarship centers on interdisciplinary, applied research to understand what works, for whom, and in what settings, while generating reliable evidence to promote well-being among youth. She examines how preventive programs can build on the strengths of children, families, and communities to improve outcomes. Her work also addresses how evidence is generated, synthesized, and used in ways that better reflect representation, fairness, and inclusion, while expanding definitions of rigor beyond experimental designs to include diverse forms of evidence such as qualitative and community-based approaches. Her recent research examines the responsible use of artificial intelligence in evidence ecosystems, focusing on improving efficiency and access while identifying and mitigating risks related to bias, representation, and governance.Panel discussionHealth equity and innovation in prevention