August 2005 newsletter

Welcome to the August 2005 edition of the EPHA newsletter.

Traditionally this is a quiet month, with many offices closed and much of the EU institutions empty.

However for the EPHA Secretariat this has been a very busy period preparing forthcoming conferences, drafting policy papers and implementing a re-organisation of the staff structure.

The international conference organized by EPHA and several UK regions under the UK Presidency "Future Europeans - the right start in life for children and young people in Europe" opens for general registration on 1st September. Please check the conference website for more information. We encourage EPHA members to register for this event that will bring together 200 local and regional authorities, practitioners, NGOs and policy-makers from across Europe and will feed into key EU initiatives such as a Communication on implementation of children’s rights, the YOUTH PACT, a Communication on the health of young people and other EU activities that impact on children.

Another event organised by EPHA and open to members is the workshop on the right to health and the right of access to health care, this highly interactive workshop seeks to explore the fundamental right to health and the right of access to health care and to draw conclusions for a rights-based approach to EU social policies. The workshop is part of a two day conference organized by the Social Platform, to register and for more information, please contact the conference website: "Building Social Policies on Fundamental Rights".

The organization of the parallel workshops for the Open Health Forum started with a meeting with the Commission, followed with some contacts with the organizations involved in each workshop. Please check the conference website for more information.

On the policy side, a new EPHA briefing note on the proposed Health and Consumer programme 2007-2013 is available on EPHA’s website.

The English version of the Charter of Rights of Sexual Patients which is a deliverable for the EPHA project in partnership with HERA, has been posted online.

Tamsin Rose announced in March that she was stepping down. Her commitments with EPHA finish at the end of this year and in the meantime Lara Garrido-Herrero will assume the position of Acting General Secretary to ensure a smooth transition to a new management. Anne Hoel, EPHA’s Policy Assistant since January 2005, will take the position of Policy Officer as of 12 September. The recruitment of a new Project Manager (deadline for applications was 29 August) will also bring more capacity to the team.

EPHA members can find several items in the members only section:

A draft agenda to next week’s Policy Coordination Meeting (7 September) and the draft minutes of the previous meeting.

A report to the informal meeting with the Commission on the Green Paper on Mental Health is available on the members’ only website.

The Commission launched a consultation on the demographic change, the deadline to respond is the 15 October 2005. EPHA members are invited to comment on EPHA’s draft response to the consultation until the 10 October 2005. Please send your comments to Lara Garrido-Herrero.

 Read all the online articles of our newsletter for August 2005.