NEWSLETTER July 2026
From the editor
Chasing cooler climates with warmer ideas
by Lars Münter
Europeans used to travel south for summer heat; this year, many are heading north to escape it – one small sign of how far climate change now reaches into health.
Summer 2026 exposes the gaps of our ability to transform science into practice, a gap that calls for sharper literacies of foresight, design, trust and relation. WHO Europe’s Innovation Platform, now some 250 organisations and experts across nine working groups – several staffed by EHFF members – har been built to help this forward. We hope to also bring this and the lessons from our event in Nicosia and the Cypriot EU Presidency into the Irish October 14th.
Our July newsletter also carries multiple threads. Lots of advances in science, lots of challenges from climate, slow uptake to get the former to help the latter. The process of transformation needs a stronger literacy of foresight, of design, of trust, of relations.
In WHO Europe, this is also recognised by the WHO Innovation Agenda. And hence, the WHO Public Health Innovation Platform and 250 member organisations and experts are getting into gear to identify solutions and paths. A solid number of EHFF members are working across the 9 different working groups. One of the Agenda’s four mega-shifts, quantum collaboratives, names directly what several of us in this Forum have been arguing in our own work: that impossible problems need reimagined partnerships, not more coordination meetings dressed up as innovation.
I also hope the many groups will look at stronger capability-building for patient process and listening leadership – and not more pilot projects. Scaling or implementing an innovation across dozens health systems asks something of the people doing the scaling – futures literacy to hold multiple horizons at once, trust literacy to navigate the ethos, pathos and logos of unfamiliar partners, design thinking to prototype rather than pronounce, and relational skills to tackle the natural anxieties that change produce.
These are teachable skills, not personality traits, and new platforms to use, train, and catalyse system-level transformation are needed. I look forward to also explore this during the Irish EU Presidency – and hope that also Irish creativity, poetry, tenacity, and luck will help futures take a step forward during the fall of 2026 and plenty of exciting activities to get our many skills into action (and publication too…).
Written by:
Lars Münter, EHFF Network Director
This month’s newsletter was co-edited and compiled by Cristina Carnovale, a member of the EHFF.
Cristina Carnovale, EHFF member
Featured Research: Exercise as Medicine in Oncology
Exercise has moved from a lifestyle suggestion to a mechanistically-understood, dose-responsive clinical intervention. New research shared by Stephanie Otto shows how exercise accounts for cut in recurrence risk by 28% in Stage III colon cancer patients. Read more.
Blog: Most health systems are built on a strange kind of evidence: the evidence of absence.
Based on Antonovsky basic idea about salutogenesis, Ushma Issar unpacks how we measure health Somewhere along the way, we started treating the absence of illness as proof of health, when really it’s just the space we’ve stopped paying attention to. Read more.
Book: “Physiology of Bullying” Now on Waterstones’ Shelves
Liza Collins‘ book Physiology of Bullying is now stocked by Waterstones, one of the UK’s major book retailers – a strong signal of growing mainstream interest in workplace wellbeing and the physiological toll of bullying in organisations. It’s a welcome sign that evidence-based approaches to organisational health are reaching wider audiences beyond specialist and academic circles. Read more.
Research option: Menopause and Brain Health
Nahid Zokaei and her team at Cerebella team are calling for input to advance research into the links between menopause and brain health. If you work in this space or simply have insight to share, this is an open invitation to contribute to a growing body of evidence on a topic that affects half the population and remains chronically under-studied. Read more.
New Community of Practice: Workplace Safety and Wellbeing
Workplace safety isn’t just physical – it’s psychological. Carina Dantas and Anna Gallinat are part of the BRAVE-WOW project to identify, understand, and prevent gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) within workplace settings, specifically targeting the unique challenges faced in healthcare environments. Read more.
White Paper: AI perspectives in Morocco
Adam Skali shares white paper from CIeS – international benchmarking across 12 countries, 32 interviews with key stakeholders in Morocco, a survey of approximately 500 patients and citizens, and a survey of around 400 healthcare professionals. Read more.
BGF: I’m Sorry You’re Feeling This Way
A sharp reflection by Jen Newell in her blog series The Architecture of Harm, on the difference between an apology and a deflection – about how “sorry you’re feeling this way” quietly shifts institutional harm onto the person harmed, reframing a systemic response as a private, manageable emotion. Read more.
Upcoming events
Irish EU Presidency – Health Priorities and Beyond
October 14, Dublin
EHFF event co-organised with Trinity College. Programme TBC.
Swiss Gender Medicine Symposium
October 26, Bern
Kateryna Ostrovska is joining the session on “Education – Innovation in Europe and Beyond. Read more.
Innovating Health Together 2026
October 28, Lisbon
Lars Münter is joining the conference session “Making Prevention Investable: New Business Models for Sustainable Health Systems”. Read more.
European Mental Health Futures
November 19-20, Nicosia
Mental Health Roundtable at European University Cyprus with WHO Europe Cyprus & EU PROMENS. Read more.
RESOLVE: Resilience and Evaluation of Systems under Ongoing Learning, Vulnerability and Emergencies
A 4-day in-person CPD Course 30 November – 3 December 2026 Trinity College Dublin
Additional Stories
Ireland at the Helm: What the Irish EU Presidency Means for Health
Ireland took over the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU for the second half of 2026, under the motto “Strength with Unity.” Built around competitiveness, values and security, the Presidency frames health explicitly as a driver of Europe’s competitiveness rather than a stand-alone policy field. For EHFF, an Irish-registered organisation, it’s a moment worth watching closely. Read more.
ISEO 2026 – Future Exercise Oncology
Screenshot
Dr. Stephanie Otto (PhD) and colleagues from Ulm University Hospital, the Comprehensive Cancer Center Ulm (CCCU), the Technical University Munich, and international partners presented three abstracts at the ISEO (International Society of Exercise Oncology) Conference 2026 in Heidelberg, alongside a new peer-reviewed publication in Frontiers in Oncology. Read more.
Securing Europe’s Medicines: The Critical Medicines Act Gains Momentum
Medicine shortages remain one of Europe’s most persistent health-security gaps, and the Critical Medicines Act (CMA) is emerging as the EU’s main tool to close it – mapping vulnerabilities, identifying critical medicines and supporting strategic manufacturing capacity closer to home. The Irish Blood Transfusion Service is urging the Irish Presidency to prioritise the CMA’s implementation. Read more.
Great Discoveries Are Not Made by Following the Scientific Method
Iain McGilchrist argues that many of history’s breakthrough discoveries owed less to the linear scientific method than to intuition, imagination and ways of knowing more often associated with art. It’s a provocative read for anyone thinking about how innovation actually happens in health and science – a reminder that foresight, creativity and evidence-based rigour are not opposites, but partners. Read more.
The Future of Health Professions in Italy
A new Future Brief from Randstad Research and Ecosistema Futuro/ASviS maps four scenarios for Italy’s National Health Service through 2032 – from tech-only and demographics-only extremes to a “future-past” status quo – arguing that only an integrated response to workforce shortages, ageing, and digitalisation can secure a resilient, equitable system. Read more.
New EHFF Podcast episode!
That’s a wrap for Season 1! We close with two brilliant EHFF members, Kateryna Ostrovska and Agathe Acchiardo, exploring foresight in health: what it is, why it matters, and how futures thinking meets design thinking. Foresight isn’t prediction, it’s better questions. Thank you for listening all season – and listen to more here.
New Podcast from Rypple – Trust, Irrelevance and the Art of Health-ing
In this Health-ing podcast episode, Lars Münter joins hosts Ushma Issar and Thomas Plochg to explore “irrelevance” as a source of innovation, trust literacy as a design principle, and shared decision-making as a growing sphere, not a finite pie. A rich conversation on curiosity, uncertainty, and reimagining health systems. Listen to it here.
New Members
Rypple (NL) supports governments and public sector organizations in shifting healthcare systems from reactive disease management to proactive, evidence-based prevention. We combine policy expertise, advanced analytics, and delivery intelligence to help decision-makers prioritize prevention, design interventions, and implement them at scale in a measurable and accountable way.
Jen Newell (UK) – My work focuses on system behaviour, organisational dynamics, and the lived experience of collapse stage healthcare. I’m particularly interested in the structural patterns that drive harm, mis signalling, and institutional defensiveness – and in how these patterns can be surfaced, named, and changed.
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EHFF