EHFF Newsletter No.18
Updates, Progress… and Ideas
strategy meeting was imminent. On the 4th of May, 12 of our 15 Trustees and Advisors met to review our mission and progress. While it was exciting that we still all felt absolutely committed to the goal of supporting the transformation of European health and healthcare, the disappointing thing was that there was a sense of deja vu about the discussion. We felt that we’d really good ideas about the direction of transformation but hadn’t found the right means yet, for effective implementation.There’s some kind of cliché about looking for solutions in unexpected places. EHFF had, a few years ago, joined the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) and thence the steering group for the All-Ireland WEAll Hub, being ourselves a charity registered in Ireland. We had always seen the Hub as an action research project, looking at a parallel transformation of the dominant economic model towards one more meeting the needs of society. Recently I believe, we’ve had pay-off in terms of learnings from that exercise that would benefit our work in health. In both the Hub and in our transformational catalyst working group we’d recognised the importance of narrative in bringing about societal change. At the Dublin WEAll conference in June on ‘Rethinking Growth’ (see below) I felt we’d reached some additional understanding of the issue and a way forward.
Essentially, it’s about who controls the narrative. Many commentators argue that powerful players representing vested interests maintain a status quo which benefits them but is harmful both to society and to the planet. They effectively lobby Governments to prevent scientifically validated change and they have a huge effect on public attitudes and behaviours via sophisticated, large-scale manipulation techniques. Their control over the current narrative has to be challenged and counterbalanced and this is a role for actors like EHFF, FEASTA and many other players in the arena, seeking societal sustainability. Challenging the narrative in these circumstances seems like a tall order, but if this is the key to starting to bring about the kind of transformation we envision, I believe that collectively, we do have a way forward. More next time!
We’ve been out and about a bit during the last quarter, but first, a quick update on some of our current projects that are more down to earth. In the Autumn we plan to have, not just project updates, but more short thought pieces from colleagues within the EHFF network.
August 2024
1. EHFF Project on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)
2. Progress on the Transformational Catalyst Project
The Group has progressed the idea of EHFF as a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) as the basis for a funding bid. A paper from the Group’s newest member, Chris Heginbotham, was circulated in July. In the paper Chris notes “the DAO concept could enable a process whereby communities, over a relatively short period of time, might take on responsibility for their own health and healthcare through 
genuine engagement in creating and obtaining funding a range of alternative options, thus becoming, in itself, a transformational catalyst. The DAO concept is an emerging form of organisational structure with no central governing body, whose members share a common goal of acting in the best interest of the entity and make decisions using a bottom-up management approach.” Chris’ paper debates the options available to EHFF that link to our previous work with the 3 Horizons model. The working group are in discussion over these and will review the options in September.
Since our last report, colleagues from Queensland University have had to withdraw from a potential collaborative project due to changes in their local funding mechanism. We hope to resume our discussions with them in the Autumn.
Meanwhile the paper describing our work so far in this area has been submitted for publication and we await the response. Thanks to Kristine Sørensen for facilitating this.
* * * * * * * * * Connect with EHFF on LinkedIn here * * * * * * * * *
3. Health in the Wellbeing Economy
a) The WEAll Irish Hub has made steady progress in terms of getting small grants to support its growth and developing more links with like-minded organisations. Its major project this year was the hosting of a two-day conference in Dublin in June, (more fully reported in the next article below). The ‘cultural creatives’ project played a minor role at the conference but is the focus of work in the coming months, which will be reported in due course.
What is also reported below is the parallel session on health during the conference, convened by David Somekh, who provides a lengthy precis of the content. With very distinguished contributors, the striking thing was that no-one attempted to answer the question: what would health look like in a wellbeing economy? We heard expert views with a holistic focus (looking especially at the current role of inequality and the economic determinants) but although increasing the role of prevention and education were highlighted, no-one sought to speculate on what health and healthcare would look like if a wellbeing economy replaced a growth-based one, as the basis for national economic planning.
(b) EHFF/WEAll working group on the role of health in the Wellbeing Economy To update the last newsletter, there has been slow but steady progress in forming and defining terms of reference for the WEAll Health working group. Aamirah Patel, engagement lead for the WEAll Amplification team has taken over joint management of the working group with David. Simon Ticehurst, movements and advocacy lead for the WEAll AMP team is also an active participant in the group. We’ve got some consensus that a central part of the mission of the group would be to address the very question referred to above and to that extent, the material from the Dublin conference should be a valuable input for the group when it next meets, after the summer break.
4. EHFF ‘out and about..’
There are three principal events to report on, two in June, one due in September.
a) All-Ireland WEAll Hub conference ‘Rethinking Growth’: Trinity College Business School, Dublin, 25-26 June.
The website provides a very full description of the rationale for the meeting and includes videos of the plenary sessions. In essence, it was a very successful meeting with up to 200 diverse attendees at various stages during the two days. More detailed material of the conference content will be available subsequently. The full programme on the website indicates that after lunch on the second day one of four parallel sessions was titled: ‘What configuration might health take on, in a wellbeing economy?’ and was moderated and co-organised by David Somekh, representing EHFF, one of the founder members of the WEAll Ireland hub steering committee. A separate report on this session is available to download here
The conference was the first large public event organised by the All-Ireland WEAll hub and generally it was felt to be a considerable success, thanks to support from many individuals and some helpful funders. Caroline Whyte from FEASTA and Peter Doran from QUB headed the conference team on behalf of the Hub steering group.
b) “Prioritising the well-being of the workforce: challenges, lessons learnt and recommendations to tackle the workforce crisis”. A workshop on 27th June in Brussels as part of the strategic agenda of All Policies for a Healthy Europe.
- Lyudmil Ninov – European Health Management Association,
- Rebekah Smith – IBM,
- Camille Roux – Mental Health Europe,
- Katherine de Bienassis – OECD, and
- Matthias Wismar – Euro Observatory on Health Systems & Policies.
The full Agenda is available for download here. As the workshop was run on Chatham House rules, a more detailed report is not available, but some agreed materials will be posted subsequently.The AP4HE Digital Working Group also held a workshop recently, titled: The new AI health paradigm: Real-world cases shaping the future of healthcare and well-being”. A brief overview of the two events can be accessed here.
c) Global Health Literacy Summit (IHLA): Health literacy for people and planet 18-20 September 2024, Rotterdam, Netherlands
EHFF is an affiliate member of the council of the International Health Literacy Association and this year Lars Munter, as EHFF advisor (but also representing the Nordic Wellbeing Academy) and David Somekh submitted an abstract titled ‘Barriers to the adoption of health literacy in Europe: a systemic view – and what can we do about this?’ (The abstract details can be downloaded here).
Lars will represent us in Rotterdam in September as he is also speaking on another topic (obesity and HL) in a different session and David sadly can’t be there. Furthermore, as Lars and David are both IHLA Council Affiliates and belong to an Interest Group “Health Literacy and Health Behaviour”, this group will also hold a session in Rotterdam which Lars will attend on our behalf.
5. EHFF Content for Communication
We’ve started to do an extensive review of our communications strategy. One aspect of this is to look at the potential teaching material contained in two sets of activity. Firstly, readers will know that in 2021/22 we, that is, EHFF and Nordic 2030 Health, completed 15 webinars on the European health ecosystem in partnership with Ubiquity University’s ‘Humanity Rising’ programme. (These are all available on on our YouTube channel). Subsequently, one of our team, Lee Rainbow, has edited the material and has produced roughly 50 stand-alone video extracts which we’ve collated. We’re trying to decide how best to use this material.
Secondly, since 2019, FEASTA has co-hosted a series of podcasts with EHFF on bridging the gap between environmental sustainability and health. Caroline Whyte has been chief editor and Sean Conlan and David Somekh have assisted with finding speakers and sharing the interviewing. Again, this is material with considerable potential educational value and a list of 15 recent recordings, from the last 18 months, can be downloaded here.
Lots more that we could discuss, but the summer holidays beckon!
David Somekh
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