The 2015 Bad Gastein Forum gathered about 500 participants including politicians, patients, pharmaceutical industry, health professionals and other health community players. The motto of the Forum – ‘Securing Health in Europe. Balancing priorities, sharing responsibilities’ – set the tone of plenary sessions. The idea of Health in All Policies (HIAP) was once again debated with a conclusion that it does not work in practice. A question from audience on who in the European Commission is responsible for HIAP revealed lack of EU strategy in the matter. The issue of refugees came back in most of discussions, with a very passionate speech of the EU Health Commissioner stating: “There is no refugee crisis… this is a crisis of solidarity in the EU!”
Two sessions were focused on patient empowerment: 1. Patient empowerment in practice (organised by the European Patient Forum) presenting concrete initiatives of PE and ‘’From Citizen to Citoyen’ on how to empower the European patient through digital solutions and structured programmes. The latter included a presentation from Tobias Gantner of HealthCare Futurists – an EHFF community member. I had a short talk with Prof. Ilona Kickbusch to touch upon the idea of EHFF providing an umbrella for existing ENOPE network to strengthen its active involvement in policy issues – to be followed up.
Author: Agnieszka Daval-Cichon (EHFF Community member)