The H2020 funded research projects studying relations between smoking and respiratory health are a high valuable source of knowledge that supports or inspires new policy interventions to cope with diseases related to smoking. Nevertheless, the success of public health policies requires adaptation to local realities, as clearly showed by international experiences with fighting disease in various countries, populations and socio-economic contexts and by monitoring the sustainable development goals on disease world burden. Therefore, the implementation science has captured more and more the interest of workers on health interventions in the last 10 years. The European Commission is pioneering and structuring this evolving type of research. In FP7 and H2020, it invested more than EUR 150 million in implementation research through specific calls for addressing a number of chronic disease areas of high interest among world’s largest funders.
Thus, several H2020 “societal challenges” projects focused on finding creative solutions to control in practice risk factors and diseases related to lung, metabolic, vascular, mental, cancer or maternal and child health. Among them, a number of projects specifically addressed aspects of tobacco consumption, showing the importance of this particular challenge. They are getting now to the final stage. Their preliminary conclusions are delivering strong policy messages. This also demonstrates the value and the need of further developing the implementation science. Horizon Europe, the new EUR 100 billion research and innovation programme, will strengthen the research and innovation role in supporting EU health policies. New opportunities are opened for multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral research able to tackle with global and complex challenges in real contexts.