Towards true One Health: Enhancing One Health efforts through EU support mechanism
25 January 2023 | 14:00-16:00 | European Parliament, Brussels
The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), a temporary EU financial mechanism, is the key instrument at the heart of NextGenerationEU to support the sustainability and resilience of Member States in the COVID-19 pandemic recovery. Yet, it remains to be discussed how the use of the funds is invested in different countries, and whether the given support complements the principles of One Health. This roundtable event discussed how the implementation of the RRF is seen from different stakeholder perspectives, and to what extent it fulfils the aims of a One Health approach, through bringing together EU decisionmakers and Member State and civil society representatives.
The event was hosted by MEP István Ujhelyi.
Towards a European Health Union: how far have we come in strengthening health system resilience in Europe?
1 December 2022 | 14:00-15:00 | online
The responses to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated what the EU can achieve in health and health systems. We have seen joint procurement of vaccines. The mandate of existing EU agencies like the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have been expanded. They have been joined by the Health Emergency and Response Authority (HERA) whose sole mission is to prepare for, and deal with, future health emergencies, and the expanded use of civil protection mechanisms and other important instruments. In March 2021, the European Parliament approved the EU4Health programme, with a budget of €5.3 billion, more than 10 times the budget of previous health programmes. And there is more to come including the new pharmaceutical strategy and the global health strategy. In this webinar we discussed how far we have come in establishing a European Health Union, what further support is needed from the perspective of Member States to strengthen the resilience of health systems, and how we can maintain the momentum for health and health systems in the EU.
Strengthening European Reference Networks: ensuring optimal care for all
23 June 2022 | 12:00-13:00 | online
European Reference Networks (ERNs) aim to optimise care for patients with complex or rare diseases and conditions that require highly specialised treatment, by facilitating discussion among providers in different European countries and bundling knowledge and resources. The first ERNs were launched in 2017, involving more than 900 highly specialised healthcare units from over 300 hospitals in 26 EU countries. How can we build on the successes of the ERN model to ensure best possible care for patients with rare diseases in a post-pandemic world? Is the ERN model the way forward for service delivery in a stronger European Health Union?
This is the third installment in a series of webinars on the European Health Union initiative, aiming at advancing the European Health Union beyond crisis preparedness and adding value for societies and citizens.
The European health workforce and the digital skills gap: What is the EU’s role in closing the divide?
10 March 2022 | 11:00-12:00 | online
Digital tools hold the potential to improve the efficiency, accessibility, and quality of care. But even if the technologies are at hand, we cannot fully utilise them whilst the digital skills gap in the health workforce remains.
During the COVID-19 pandemic many digital health tools moved from being viewed as a potential opportunity to becoming an immediate necessity, and the use of them increased substantially, including tools for eHealth, mHealth, and Big Data.
The European Commission, being mindful of progress in other regions of the world, has launched a skills agenda for a green and digital transformation for all economic sectors to ensure necessary modernisation. For health and social care, a digitally skilled health workforce is absolutely essential to ensure patient centeredness, care integration and multi-disciplinary teamwork. Given that the European health workforce is mobile, crossing national borders, digital skills must be ensured in all countries.
Now is the time to strengthen digital skills as many countries are building back better their health systems. But what’s the EU’s role in closing the digital skills gap with regards to regulation, funding, quality standards, and technical issues? And how can we support Member States to collaborate more effectively in bridging the digital divide amongst the health workforce in order to universally improve care?
The European Health Union & access to health technologies: is joint purchasing the way forward?
10 February 2022 | 12:00-13:00 | online
This 60-minute session is the first of a European Health Union Initiative webinar series with the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, organised in close cooperation European Health Forum Gastein.
The enduring problem of ensuring sustainable and equitable access to affordable medicines and other health technologies for all has been highlighted once again during the COVID-19 crisis. In this upcoming webinar organised in close collaboration between the European Health Union initiative and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, we will explore whether we can harness the recent experience of joint purchasing during the pandemic to better ensure equitable access to health technologies for diverse patient groups in the future.
Have we failed to protect Europe’s people?
The case for a European Health Union
11 March 2021 | online
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to grip the continent, it is hard to deny that our collective failings during the crisis have been massive. Fault lines in the current model of European collaboration are standing out starkly again in the struggle for timely and equitable vaccine roll-outs.
The initiative for a European Health Union (EHU)is calling for more, and better Europe amidst this crisis – a renewed concentration on our shared core values, and a commitment to vest into the EU the necessary powers to sustainably secure better health for all. This webinar in the series Towards a European Health Union, hosted by the EHU Initiative and facilitated by the European Health Forum Gastein, will take an unflinching look at what is going wrong, and how we can get it right in the future.
Towards a European Health Union: A vision for more EU in health
9 December 2020 | 10:00-11:00 | online
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact Europe and the world, the need for European cohesion and global solidarity in health has never been stronger. Building on the conversations started in the EHFG webinar series Gastein goes online: Policy debates during the pandemic, we are proud to present our first webinar in the framework of the European Health Union (EHU) initiative: Towards a European Health Union: A vision for more EU in health, which took place on December 9th 10:00 – 11:00 AM CET.
The webinar introduces the EHU initiative’s Manifesto for a European Health Union and engages expert speakers and webinar participants in a candid dialogue about the Manifesto’s goals and how they may best be achieved. As the Conference on the Future of Europe charts a course for Europe’s road to recovery, can we take the current crisis as an opportunity to build a stronger, more participatory and more resilient European (Health) Union where the lives and health of everyone matter?