Sharing knowledge with the South-eastern Europe Health Network to address medical deserts

Sharing knowledge with the South-eastern Europe Health Network to address medical deserts

On March 16-17th 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!

Addressing medical desertification in Europe: a call to action

Addressing medical desertification in Europe: a call to action

Panelists in the event include:

  • Katarzyna Ptak-Bufkens, DG Sante
  • Paolo Michelutti, Coordinator of the new Joint Action on Health workforce planning and forecasting
  • Dr John Wynn-Jones, EURIPA, the European Rural and Isolated Practitioners Association
  • Tomas Zapata, WHO European Regional office (pre-recorded intervention)
  • Dorota Tomalak, Committee of the Regions
  • Marina Royo de Blas, DG AGRI

With this panel discussion, our ambition is to:

  • Shortly highlight the main findings of the AHEAD project
  • Invite reflections by experts and key stakeholders from different, and complementary, areas of expertise
  • Explore policy solutions to medical desertification by EU institutes and organisations

The event is kindly hosted by MEP Beatrice Covassi.
Moderation by Mariam Zaidi.

Location and registration:

  • Live from Brussels and online. Registration for in-person attendance is closed. To follow the livestream of the event, please visit this link.

Looking forward to seeing you soon!
The AHEAD Project team

Recording AHEAD webinar about policy options for effectively tackling medical deserts

Recording AHEAD webinar about policy options for effectively tackling medical deserts

What are policy options for effectively tackling medical deserts? During our webinar on March 15th, the partners of the Action for Health and Equity: Addressing medical Deserts (AHEAD), discussed this question by sharing the outcomes of our participatory consensus-building workshops with stakeholders in Italy, Moldova, the Netherlands, Romania and Serbia. The recording of this webinar is now available on YouTube.

We shared interesting and innovative ideas to tackle medical deserts and improve access to healthcare in the different countries, such as investing in mobile health services, setting up a taskforce for medical deserts, and making the region more attractive for general-practitioners to live in.

We were also delighted that Katarzyna Ptak-Bufkens (Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety, European Commission) joined us and reflected on the policy options presented by our country representatives. She emphasized the importance of contextualization of country-specific policy solutions, as there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, given the differences between the countries. “We should measure better and get a better understanding of medical deserts, involve the right stakeholders in the policy solutions, shape and support our health workforce, and evaluate the policy solutions,” she concluded. She also emphasized that our project findings are critical as feedback for the EU’s work on health workforce planning and country-specific activities.

Our speakers were:

Moderator:
Aysel Rahimli – project coordinator for AHEAD (Wemos, Netherlands)

Reflections by:
Katarzyna Ptak-Bufkens (Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety, European Commission)

Presentations by:

  • Bianca Ferraiolo – Head of the Representative Office to the EU (Cittadinanzattiva, Italy)
  • Corinne Hinlopen – Project officer for AHEAD (Wemos, Netherlands)
  • Dana Farcasanu – Medical doctor and Executive President (Center for Health Policies and Services, Romania)
  • Milena Santric Milicevic – Prof Social Medicine (University of Belgrade, Serbia)
  • Sergiu Otgon – Human resources for health expert (National Public Health Agency, Republic of Moldova)

We look forward to the final AHEAD webinar in May. Stay tuned for more information soon!

Webinar on March 15: What are policy options for effectively tackling medical deserts?

Webinar on March 15: What are policy options for effectively tackling medical deserts?

What are policy options for effectively tackling medical deserts? During our webinar on March 15th, with our AHEAD partners, will dive into this question (and more). We will share policy options that our country teams gathered during participatory consensus-building workshops with stakeholders in Italy, Moldova, the Netherlands, Romania and Serbia. Want to learn more? Join us on the 15th!

The policy options should contribute to addressing medical deserts and improve access to healthcare for those in underserved areas. We are also delighted that Katarzyna Ptak-Bufkens (Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety, European Commission) will join us and reflect on the policy options presented by our country representatives. The webinar will be moderated by Aysel Rahimli (project coordinator for AHEAD, Wemos, Netherlands).

Date: Wed March 15, 2023
Time: 14:00 – 15:00 PM (CET)
Register hereZoom

Moderator:
Aysel Rahimli – project coordinator for AHEAD (Wemos, Netherlands)

Reflections by:
Katarzyna Ptak-Bufkens (Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety, European Commission)

Presentations by:

  • Bianca Ferraiolo – Head of the Representative Office to the EU (Cittadinanzattiva, Italy)
  • Corinne Hinlopen – Project officer for AHEAD (Wemos, Netherlands)
  • Dana Farcasanu – Medical doctor and Executive President (Center for Health Policies and Services, Romania)
  • Milena Santric Milicevic – Prof Social Medicine (University of Belgrade, Serbia)
  • Sergiu Otgon – Human resources for health expert (National Public Health Agency, Republic of Moldova)
AHEAD Newsletter #9 2023

AHEAD Newsletter #9 2023

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

On January 25th, 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!

Webinar on March 15: what are viable policy options to effectively tackle medical deserts?

Join our next webinar on March 15! We will share and discuss policy options to effectively tackle medical deserts that we gathered from our participatory consensus-building workshops with stakeholders in Italy, Moldova, the Netherlands, Romania and Serbia.

Date: Wed March 15, 2032
Time: 1400 – 15:00 PM (CET)
Language: English
Location: Zoom – please register here.

Watch our webinar about our participatory consensus building methodology

On January 27th, we organised a webinar about our participatory consensus-building methodology, led by our partner VU Athena Institute. Our AHEAD partners shared their experience with applying our methodology in workshop sessions with stakeholders in areas affected by medical desertification in Italy, Moldova, the Netherlands, Romania and Serbia, to increase the chances of identifying locally owned and sustainable policy solutions to counteract medical deserts and related health workforce challenges. It was an interactive webinar with interesting discussions and questions from the audience! In case you missed it or would like to watch it again, please watch the recording on YouTube. 

Our results so far…

The added value of our work and research on medical deserts lies in what makes AHEAD unique: our Medical Deserts Diagnostic Tool and our participatory consensus-building methodology. In addition, we recognize the importance of contextualising the tool and methodology to come up with effective policy, as each context and situation is different. In case you missed them before, have a look at our tool, consensus-building methodology, country research in Italy, Moldova, the Netherlands, Romania and Serbia, and our EU level research.

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