On March 16-17^th 2023, AHEAD and the South-eastern Europe Health Network (SEEHN) gathered for a two-day roundtable discussion in Tirana (Albania). Attending in-person, AHEAD representative Sergiu Otgon (human resources for health expert, National Public Health Agency, Republic of Moldova) presented our project findings, Medical Deserts Diagnostics Tool and consensus building methodology to representatives of SEEHN. Corinne Hinlopen (global health advocate and AHEAD project lead, Wemos, Netherlands) and Milena Šantrić Milićević  (professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Belgrade, Serbia) attended the roundtable online.

SEEHN is a key stakeholder in our project, as 3 out of 5 project countries belong to this region: the Republic of Moldova, the Republic of Serbia and Romania. Sharing knowledge gained in the project is important to ensure we contribute to solutions to address medical deserts in the South-eastern European region.

Countries in the South-eastern European region struggle with common problems in their health systems, relating to the process of medical desertification, including lack of health professionals, increased distances to health institutions and long waiting lists. National stakeholders are therefore in search of sustainable solutions to medical deserts in this region. The roundtable was a great opportunity to share AHEAD’s added value and the results we gained during the last two years, and to foster future collaborations.

Sergiu Otgon: “This regional meeting was a great success and experience for the Moldovan team and me personally. The knowledge that we shared as AHEAD was met with SEEHN’s professionals’ willingness to listen, learn and implement AHEAD’s key findings, tools and strategies. Being a Member State in SEEHN, stakeholders of the Republic of Moldova will also benefit from the good practices and experiences shared during the roundtable in Tirana.”

Corinne Hinlopen: “I was particularly encouraged by the level of interest in the AHEAD Medical Deserts Diagnostic Tool and the suggestions from the audience on how to improve and refine it. SEEHN demonstrated a keen interest to learn and apply the lessons from our project. Which is encouraging, because many of them struggle with medical desertification themselves. Let’s hope our presentation has sparked action to tackle this challenge!”

AHEAD and SEEHN will continue to support each other and explore collaboration opportunities. Keep an eye out on our website and socials channels!

EU Health Workforce Projects Cluster meeting: joining our strengths for health workforce strengthening

On January 25^th, the first in-person EU Health Workforce Projects Cluster meeting took place at the Nivel office in Utrecht, Netherlands. Representatives of all projects involved in the Cluster – AHEAD, METEOR, OASES, ROUTE-HWF and TASHI – got together to discuss our joint strengths, synergies and collaboration opportunities, to achieve our joint goal: strengthening the health workforce in Europe.

We had fruitful discussions, sharing our project results and interesting findings so far, and discussing ways to move forward. For example, we concluded that joint events at conferences create dissemination opportunities – e.g. the European Health Management Association (EHMA) conference in June, in Rome. We also see opportunity to present our work (of all projects) at a joint EU Health Workforce Cluster event. Stay tuned for more information soon!

Evaluating AHEAD: survey

With a few more months to go until our project ends, the AHEAD team is currently conducting our end of project evaluation, with the aim to explore the effectiveness, efficiency and relevance of our activities. We are therefore reaching out to all stakeholders, and anyone who has followed our work since the start of the project (e.g. through webinars). Your input would be extremely valuable for us to understand the impact of our project and to better plan our future work to address medical deserts. We would therefore greatly appreciate it if you could take 5 minutes of your time to fill out our survey. Thank you in advance!