Workshop “Health Policy Making, a (eu-)regional perspective on participatory approach”
On October 9th, two project of euPrevent were presented during the Week of Regions and Cities in Brussels.
Presentations can be found on the events website.
After a warm word of welcome, the moderator, Mr. Zambon of the WHO Regions for Health Network, presented briefly the well-known Sustainable Development Goals and outlined in an inspiring way how action is needed, from local to global level and from all stakeholders, in order to leave no-one behind. Because ‘what you do FOR us, WITHOUT us, is not FOR us’!
Mr. Fateh -Moghadam, Head of the Health Observatory of the province of Trento, Italy, prepared a video presentation which remains available via this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYSo0aQiEvw. He explains how the Italian Trentino region set up a health plan, actively using a participatory approach. They made a special effort to leave no one behind and had a midterm evaluation in order to be able to have input from all subgroups of the Trentino population. In this process they gained a lot of good input from their citizens which was included in the final plan.
Mrs. Geenen of the support office of the euPrevent Foundation, who replaced Ms. Schichel of Maastricht University, guided the audience through the project euPrevent Senior Friendly Communities and explained how the Participatory Approach was implemented on all levels: during the development of the project (different elderly groups were consulted); within the structure of the project (a citizen organisation is a project partner); within the assessments (mystery guests approached the communities and gave feedback); within the implementation (communities were urged to let citizens participate actively).
Ms. Van der Zanden, director of the euPrevent Foundation, presented 2 citizen summits that were held in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine (EMR) to ask input from the citizens on the topics: equity, participatory approach and human resources for health. These 3 topics were also addressed in the WHO RHN – CoR conference that was held in the EMR in June 2019. By asking input from the citizens prior to the event, the voice of the citizen was incorporated in the event for professionals.
Mrs. van Dijk of the Flanders Agency for Care and Health, explained how the region Flanders worked out a new primary health care plan, together with all stakeholders, using a participatory approach on all levels. She showed how, by going slow in the beginning and involving all stakeholders, the commitment towards the plan grows. This way the implementation is supported by a bigger group of stakeholders.
