EHFF End-of-Year Bumper Newsletter

Highlights of 2023

image of an older man wearing glasses smiling at the camera

David Somekh Network Director of EHFF

From the editor:

The show must go on. We’re in the circus of the health ecosystem and the wider chaos of early 21^st century world events. A tough and turbulent environment, but quixotically we believe, as do a small but energetic and motivated minority, that we might be able to make a difference. Our mission is to help transform systems, firstly in health, secondly with the wellbeing economy and who knows where else. We’re not so naïve as to think, even when like-minded organisations get together, that we can easily overcome the strong forces of inertia and the encrustation of our health systems that derive from mainly misguided systemic (or financial) incentives and that maintain the current, fundamentally destructive status quo. But we sincerely wish to dismantle that status quo and in doing so, prepare the substrate that will support major constructive change. Here’s a review of what we got up to during 2023 via various work areas, including

–   patient empowerment (with our partners in CEmPAC)
–   the wellbeing economy (through the WEAll Ireland Hub)
–   transformational catalyst (our ongoing project)
and first, all roads lead to…. Brussels. David Somekh Network Director December 2023

1. Our work within the ‘Brussels bubble’:

a) we continue to support consortia such as the Wellbeing Economy Coalition and Reimagine Europa

b) Continuing our association of several years with All Policies for a Healthy Europe (AP4HE) we’ve reassumed chairing of what was the Economy working group and is now re-profiled under the heading ‘Strengthening the link between well-being and the economy: the key to a successful and sustainable European Care Strategy’. The key elements in the AP4HE care strategy agenda that our working group would contribute to are:

supporting the growth of health literacy,
promoting a preventative approach and the
building of sustainable and resilient systems.

How does this fit with our mission? When we helped draft the AP4HE policy paper on the Wellbeing Economy at the end of 2020, a more holistic approach to health wasn’t as evident within the policy agenda. With the development during the Von der Leyen Presidency of a less business dominated agenda (e.g. the Green Growth approach) and the impact and aftermath of Covid, wellbeing has started to become a focus for this expansion in thinking. Even if people can’t necessarily agree on exactly what wellbeing is and for whom, we’ve seen the notion of care (echoing a much earlier notion e.g. the caring professions) and of wellbeing gain prominence.

c) At the end of 2020 OECD launched its Centre on Well-being, Inclusion, Sustainability and Equal Opportunity (WISE). We were happy last September to join a Future lab, looking at scenarios for wellness up to 2050, as part of an EU funded project ‘WISE Horizons’ (see https://wisehorizons.world/ ) and to join their knowledge platform.

d) In June 2023 the Commission launched a Communication on a policy initiative for a comprehensive approach to mental health. EHFF welcomed this and submitted a response to DG-SANTE’s call for evidence. We’re already deploying our expertise in the mental health field via our role in the ERASMUS+ project on promoting mental health in SMEs (see our end of 2022 Newsletter from January 2023). We have been invited by our NGO colleagues at EUFAMI and GAMIAN to participate in a webinar on Arts and Mental Health in February 2024, a subject we will investigate further during the coming year (this links with the ‘Cultural Creatives’ project – see Item 2 below).

e) Finally, a subject of major interest to the Commission but elsewhere also, is Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR), a huge threat to our future health. A small group of us at EHFF are working on a project proposal on this subject that we aim to launch in early 2024. Watch this space.

2. Catching up on progress of the WEAll All-Ireland Hub and related matters…

a) the Cultural Creatives project. Formally launched in October 2021, we last reported on progress at the beginning of this year. We developed the idea of creating transformational change in local communities via harnessing a group of creative artists to form a community of practice (CoP), aimed at stimulating the public imagination and shifting peoples’ vision ( about the economy). This ‘cultural creatives’ project attracted initial funding from the Carnegie UK Trust, which extended to December 2023 and as planned we held the first session of the group, a ‘Deep Dive’ at the Derry Playhouse at the end of March 2023. (You can watch a short introductory video here, which also references the link to a webinar with Prof Tim Jackson on ’the art of the well-being economy’.

In July a second Deep Dive took place for two days at the ecovillage in Cloughjordan, Tipperary. This was attended by about 20 participants and represented the official launch of the CoP. Finally, there was a major event held in Dublin on Dec. 15 when a short film commissioned from one of the artists was screened and a ‘call to action’ document launched, defining the next phase of the project and inviting further participation from Irish stakeholders. (More on that in our next Newsletter).

b) aside from attending WEAll global and local events online, various members of the steering group pursue their interests within the WEAll framework and its partners. These include attending major European events, such as the Beyond Growth event in the European parliament last May, events related to the COP and engagement with relevant partner activities (for example getting funds via the WEAll Amplification team from the Open Society Foundation to benefit EU Hubs).

c) The EHFF strand of engagement centres around the status of health within the wellbeing economy. We’ve felt for some time that health and its interconnection with other facets of wellbeing hasn’t been sufficiently highlighted. For that reason WEAll agreed to our presenting a webinar on the subject which was aired on September 25th (see here for the YouTube recording). Subsequently EHFF met with two members of the WEAll global amplification team, Simon Ticehurst and Margreet Frieling who agreed with the principle and will help to set up a working group on the subject with international colleagues who have already declared an interest in this area.

Why are we doing all of this? We see the activities of the Well-being Economy Alliance as an example of a transformational catalyst in action. Their work has clear overlaps with our mission to transform the health ecosystem and we believe there’s useful learnings from being engaged with them. The Irish Hub represents an action learning project on engaging with wider society in influencing changing attitudes (getting people to recognise that the current healthcare system is inherently flawed is even harder than understanding the malign influence of the current economic growth model).

3. Progress on the Transformational Catalyst Project

No success yet in raising funding to allow this work to move forward as we might wish. Nevertheless, there’s been fruitful discussion with Rabobank in Utrecht, who have substantial experience in commissioning health scenarios. Their advice was that, rather than repeat the 3H exercise from two years ago in another country, people would like to see how the transformational catalyst concept works in practice. We’re currently in dialogue with Dutch colleagues about a possible presentation during the Utrecht Health week in April. We have however prepared a paper for publication regarding our work so far and are about to submit it.

Meanwhile we have been in contact with the Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation in Queensland, Australia, where Prof. Burkett and her deputy Director are negotiating a collaborative project with us. Their team produced a paper, “Seeding Futures for Wellbeing, Catalysing Collective Imagination” which had so many common themes with our work, that we got in touch. (See here for an article about their paper). They had used the 3H scenario model like us but are interested more generically in system change. In addition, we’ve had contact with Prof. Michael Kidd, previously deputy medical officer for Australia, now Professor of Global Primary Care and Future Health Systems at the University of Oxford and Director of the Centre for Future Health Systems at the University of New South Wales. Prof Kidd is just gathering together his new department in Oxford but is a potential ally in our work, if he sees benefit for his mission. They have a high level of interest in health equity.

Finally, we are in discussion with the latest addition to our EHFF Partner group, Editohealth.org, regarding a possible workshop on transformational change at the big Radical Health Festival in Helsinki in May 2024. We hope to bring you more news on this, and our new partners, early in the new year.

3. The CEmPaC Community Interest Company (CIC)

As godparents to CEmPaC, the European Centre for Empowering Patients and Communities, EHFF has a keen interest in its development and are actively engaged with them.

During 2022 CEmPaC has continued to contribute to the Well@SME Erasmus+ project and has, through EHFF, been successful as part of a consortium led by German colleagues, in getting further ERASMUS+ funding for a two-year project ICWE, which is all about supporting informal carers. The kick-off meeting will be in January 2024.

As in previous years, CEmPaC has convened on a quarterly basis, a meeting of International Experts in Patient Empowerment to share information about activity at the leading edge of this field. During the course of 2023, the group has had new members joining from France, Spain and Slovenia. In between meetings a small subset of this group has met regularly to process the material from the 2022 Roundtable for publication. One article, on core themes of the Roundtable, is about to be submitted; a thought piece on community empowerment is being considered by one Journal and we’re pleased to report that another has just been published. You can read it here:

The Personalised Care Institute and CEmPaC collaborated in late September on a very successful webinar on Shared Decision Making: ‘Working towards a common international understanding of what works’. Subsequently, in early December CEmPaC, with the support of the PCI and EHFF convened a second international Roundtable, by invitation, on the twin themes of the skills needed by clinicians to participate in a joint decision-making process and the complementary theme of skills, support and tools to empower patients to make informed choices based on a clear understanding of risks, benefits and their own outcome preferences. The outcome of this enjoyable event is currently being processed. Finally, CEmPaC has submitted several options for workshops at the upcoming ICIC24 (Integrated Care Foundation) conference in Belfast in April 2024 and aims to contribute to the next Global Health Literacy Summit, convened by our colleagues at IHLA in Rotterdam in September 2024.

In conclusion we wish you well over the Christmas break and look forward to fruitful shared activities in 2024. David Somekh, and all the team at The European Health Futures Forum.