The European Health Futures Forum (EHFF) is pleased to announce a leadership transition that marks both continuity and renewal in our mission to advance foresight, systems thinking, and citizen-driven transformation in health and wellbeing across Europe.

Stepping into the role as Network Director is Lars Münter, who has served as EHFF’s Development Director over the past year. Lars brings a strong record from the Nordic Wellbeing Academy, the Nordic Health 2030 Movement, and a series of other roles in European and Nordic NGOs – often combining communications, innovation, and international strategy with creativity, bridge building, and interdisciplinary approaches. His leadership will strengthen EHFF’s engagement with the pressing challenges shaping health policy — from the lessons of the pandemic and geopolitical tensions to the urgent need for climate-resilient, sustainable wellbeing systems.

This comes after Dr. David Somekh is now stepping down as Network Director after more than a decade of visionary leadership. Since co-founding EHFF in 2013, David has been the driving force behind its evolution from an idea into a respected European network linking experts, innovators, and citizens. His work has strengthened EHFF’s engagement in European collaborations, integrated care, and patient empowerment. With his deep background in psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and health systems foresight, David’s thoughtful leadership has inspired a generation of health futures thinking — always grounded in humanity and trust.

As Europe and the world navigate complex transformations towards 2030 and beyond, EHFF remains committed to being a trusted platform for dialogue, creativity, and collaboration. With David’s ongoing guidance and Lars’s dynamic direction, the Forum will continue to champion futures-oriented, citizen-centred health for all.

We look forward to continue to connect, engage, and combine perspectives and energies into initiatives that can inspire. In the complexity of 2025, it is therefore heartening to see a solid influx of new members and partners – people with a passion to collaborate and change communities and futures.

For more information, contact
Lars Münter, new Network Director, EHFF
David Somekh, former Network Director, EHFF

One small step…

In the pandemic, one of the most popular Netflix stars was an octopus. A brave soul that just tried to survive by wits and dexterity in an ocean full of sharks. Very useful for many human souls, that were trying to adapt to isolation and survival mode.

Indeed our choices of popular media can often reflect a deeper need in society – at Christmas eg the dream of love, connections, and hot chocolate. It can also indirectly shape minds; people that were fond of dystopia and zombie movies had a better mental health in the beginning of the pandemic as the notion of society being upended wasn’t completely foreign to them.

So perhaps now is the time call for a solid reintroduction of sci-fi movies into popular culture. Preparing people for the fact that there is a future. And while different or foreign in some respects, likely also surprisingly similar. There will be drama. Hope. Conflict. Love. School (of some kind). Shopping (of some kind). Daily chores. But also differences – some in technology, some in ethics, some in demography. But all natural. Getting people to be more mindful of the existence of future – not just present – could be a super power for us all

The European Health Futures Forum is by now already a part of my past. First as regular member, later as part of the Advisory Group – continuously as a sandbox for exploring ideas, possibilities, and reflections. I can strongly recommend a philosophical (and yet practical) discussion with Aleš Bourek to realign your logic. Daniel Steenstra for witty and razorsharp logic. Or Tanja Valentin for no-nonsense analytics. Or…

And it is certainly also a part of my present, especially welcoming the many new members in 2025, showing me, us, the world, the width and energy of creative minds we have. A treasure trove of creativity, activity, and initiatives.

It is also part of my futures – of your futures. By imagining paths forward and taking steps to explore those paths that still haven’t been tried, we will build things we haven’t thought of yet. We will build things we have thought of for all long time too. We will fail at some things. And succeed at other things. But getting us all to both dare to dream, describe, and explain the futures we strive for will be part of the mission for ourselves, but certainly also for others. Instead of looking at sea creatures, let’s get them to dream of the stars. Or at least the metaphorical mountain tops. So we can also inspire and motivate them to go there.

It’s my great pleasure to accept the new role as Network Director of EHFF, combining a task of continuing a legacy from David Somekh with the needs of my successor. In the future, that is. And I look forward to work  with the rest of the Management Board and each of you – and the coming members – to build prosperous futures with health and wellbeing at the center. Exactly which sci-fi movie it will look like, I don’t know yet – but I will do my best to work as an octopus to connect the dots in this future adventure.

Lars Münter, new Network Director, EHFF

Futures from past to present

As I hand over the role of Network Director of EHFF to Lars Münter, he has invited me to write a review of EHFF’s changing view of the future over the 15 years or so that EHFF has identified as a futures organisation.

Interestingly, this led me down a trip down memory lane to find both path, present, and future interlocked in constant evolution.  And in a series of chapter, I will try to share some of these key reflections with you as you proceed towards new initiatives and experiences of this particular complex experience of evolution of health.

A retrospective beginning

A couple of years ago we published on the EHFF website a ten-year retrospective of our activities from 2013, when we became a legal identity (our previous activities were carried out under the banner of the European Society for Quality in Healthcare (ESQH) and most of the founder members of EHFF were on the Board of this previous NGO). You can access this retrospective here: https://ehff.eu/latest-newsletter-a-retrospective-of-ten-years-work/

The current health and healthcare system in Europe is not sustainable. This issue and how it might be tackled  was the fundamental consideration that led us to set up EHFF. Put more bluntly, the current system is broken and no longer fit for purpose and attempts to fix it are like moving the deckchairs on the Titanic – doomed to fail.

Therefore, having spent a number of years at ESQH as one of the NGO advisors to the health systems group of the European Commission we concluded that institutional barriers meant that the pace of change was far too slow, given the urgency of the situation (not acknowledged 15 years ago, but increasingly so, now) and we proposed an ‘outside the box’ approach to influencing, using futures methodologies.

Truth is, the respected Don Berwick and colleagues from the Boston Institute for Healthcare Improvement had sounded the alarm as early as 1999 but although it was acknowledged and accepted by (some ) professionals, there was virtually no impact on policymaking on either side of the Atlantic.

Having embraced the principles of both the Foresight approach and scenario planning (the Shell approach) as described in the retrospective (see the link above), we’ve used these approaches to examine the four levers for change that we had identified in 2013: patient empowerment (changing the relationship between citizen and healthcare  professional), innovation (tackling institutional resistance), eHealth (maximizing utility) and transforming healthcare education (probably the most difficult) to see how our view of possible futures has changed. As a footnote, given we’ve been studying  the future as it rushes towards us, during this time period two additional levers for change have emerged, namely social movements, and health and wellbeing.

It is these key levers that you can find summarized, analysed, reflected, dissected, and collated in the coming chapters that I will write and add to our website. It has been a pleasure to experience them, to relive them, and to now enable you all to continue this journey.

David Somekh, past Network Director and Chair of the EHFF Board of Trustees