In February 2019, two citizen summits were organised to collect the Citizen’s view on health. Using a “World Café Setting”, citizens of the Euregion Meuse-Rhine (EMR) were invited to share their view on the topics “Equity”, “Participatory Approach” and “Human Resources for health”. The outcome of these citizen summits were then used as input during the WHO RHN – Cor Annual Conference on health which took place in June.
“Your view on public health”: the opinion of the citizens on the topics “equity”, “participatory approach” and “human resources for health” was asked. These were the 3 main topics that were addressed during the WHO RHN – CoR Annual Conference. The feedback of the citizens was used as input for this conference.
The WHO Regions for Health Network (WHO RHN) believe that together we can achieve more. In Europe, millions of people live less than 80 km from their country’s borders, and cooperation between border regions in health services and human resources planning is increasing.
The 25th anniversary of the WHO Regions for Health Network represents the next step in the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the CoR and WHO in 2016. This congress serves as the basis to keep people at the centre of health and sustainable development policies on regional level.
The EMR, as a cross-border cooperation association of five sub-regions from three nation states, is the only Euregio member of the WHO Regions for Health Network (RHN), while otherwise only national regions and Länder (federal states) can be members.
All regions in the EMR face similar challenges in improving the health status of its citizens. Asking citizens for their vision together creates synergy.
A cross-border approach shows the euregional character around public health and allows citizens to experience EMR positively. If you want to talk to citizens about matters concerning the EMR, it is important to do so in a euregional setting.
It is important that EMR live more among the citizens. Where possible, citizens are brought together at a table per language during some summits and gathering. It is important that the opinion of ‘the citizen’ from the EMR is taken into account and this is why some summits were organized in this year.
In this project, EMR citizens were presented with public health issues in a citizen-friendly manner during two so-called citizens summits. These are issues that professionals also discuss with each other.
This project revolved around this vision of the citizen and this was then introduced during a WHO RHN -CoR conference at which professionals talked about the same themes. This was done by means of a report that was drawn up following the citizen summits and a video compilation.
