European studies research often features institutions: their historical evolution, their cultural meaning, their economic effects, and their political determinants. Less prominent are questions about how European institutions affect individuals’ living conditions. These gaps in knowledge are surprising for two reasons: first, population health research has turned toward considering the various “upstream” factors that influence population health; and second, European institutions have emerged that not only shape the boundaries of the European population but also shape the “social determinants of health” such as employment, housing, and social insurance systems. For example, policymaking at the European level addresses health behaviors (e.g. anti-smoking legislation), the social environment (e.g. income, discrimination), and health services (e.g. cross-border healthcare or regulation of pharmaceutical markets). Our session aims to develop the conversation at the junction of new population health research and the institutional investigation of Europe. The session contributes to this conversation in several ways: (1) first, the papers take a distinctively European angle in the sense that they view individuals as embedded not only within nation states but into a broader geographical, social as well as political space; (2) second, the papers analyze how processes at the macro-level affect individual’s outcomes (in terms of health) directly and thus highlight channels which connect the former with the latter; (3) third, the papers suggest how the analysis of health can contribute to theoretical development in European Studies through the consideration of outcomes that are affected by asynchronous, cumulative, and other timeframes of institutional causation.