Secretariat News October 2009

Activities and events

General Assembly This was held in Brussels on 14-15 October. Highlights included Presentation of the EPHA Services to Public Health Award to John Bowis, and a interactive session with Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou. EPHA also elected a new Executive Committee including President, Archie Turnbull. Please read about the new ExCo here. Initial verbal feedback and review of evaluations submitted was very positive, both for the business meeting, APCM and for the Masterclass on funding. Following the approval of the Annual Report 2008, please find it online here. The 2010 Strategic Priorities and Work Plan 2010 was approved, which members can access online here. Minutes will be online soon. Photographs and write-ups are now available online here

Policy Coordination Meeting - October On 7 October 2009, EPHA held its monthly Policy Coordination Meeting, which gathered EPHA members, vith a view to discuss the policy and advocacy work of the organisation. Please find more information available here

Health Intergroup Currently Secretariat is working to secure the Intergroup, which involves a number of processes within the Parliament. We need three political groups to secure an Intergroup and the Secretariat has been supported by members and interested MEPs in the final few weeks before the decision is made at the end of November.

EU Health Policy Forum EPHA is the Secretariat and member of the EUHPF, an informal Commission consultation mechanism made up of +/-50 pan-European organisations (industry and NGO) working in the field of health. The second (biannual) meeting this year was held in Brussels on 16 October. Please find a write-up online here. There are three processes that came out of the October meeting: a draft letter to the Parliament on the Public Health Programme; a draft letter to the Swedish Presidency and a workshop on post-Lisbon (to be held in 2010).

12th European Health Forum, Gastein Gastein was held this year from 30 Sept – 1 Oct. The meeting is held annually and attended by 500-600 high level representatives from across Europe in government, academia and industry. There are very few patient groups or NGOs, therefore EPHA is highly visible both as participant and also as a speaker. Please find a write-up online here

Civil Society Contact Group – European Parliament Fair and Workshop EPHA is the health sector representative to the Civil Society Contact Group (CSCG), a meta-group representing the 8 NGO sectors. EPHA is represented on the CSCG by Monika Kosinska and a member representative, who was selected via an open call in Autumn 2008 for a two-year term – Gunther Schulz, EPHA Treasurer. October had a number of activities within the CSCG that EPHA was involved in. Firstly, the CSCG held a ‘Meet Civil Society’ Fair in the first week of October. Please find a write-up of the Fair here. Alongside the Fair, there were a number of events held by the CSCG members as part of the ‘Meet Civil Society’ week including a workshop on Pandemic Flu responses organised by Fundamed, EPHA member, supported by EPHA. Please find a write-up of the workshop here. The CSCG is facing financial difficulties this year and in 2010 and on 29 October a meeting was held to discuss its future. Please find a write-up from the Steering Group meeting here

EPHA Directory of NGOs During the summer 2009, EPHA started to compile a Directory of its members for printing for the new Parliament. This Directory will be available before the end of 2009.

10th Anniversary of DG Sanco As part of the celebrations of 10 years of DG Sanco, the EPHA Secretary General, Monika Kosinska, was invited to participate in a high level meeting on 23 October in Brussels, preceded by a high level dinner on the evening of 22 October. The celebrations were organised as an opportunity to reflect upon the successes of the previous 10 years, and identify for discussions challenges for the future. A full report of EPHA’s presentation and the meeting can be found here.

DG Sanco’s first EU Health Prize for Journalists In 2009, the first edition of the EU Health Prize for Journalists was awarded to stimulate high-quality journalism that raises awareness of issues related to healthcare and patients’ rights. A report from this can be found online here.

Annual Public Health Conference – Ĺódź, Poland The EPHA Secretariat has been preparing its contribution to the Annual Public Health Conference at the end of November. EPHA is organising three workshops and participating in an additional three - more information can be found about EPHA’s participation here.

European policy and legislation

Health Strategy Following the EUHPF meeting (please see previous report), the Secretary General is drafting the response to the Swedish Presidency. This will be a letter outlining an opinion from the Forum on the implementation of the Commission’s Health Strategy, and suggestions and recommendations for the Council, Commission and Parliament on the implementation of this Strategy going forward. Please click here to see the draft letter

Health Inequalities On October 20, the Commission published the long-awaited Communication on Health Inequalities: “Communication on Solidarity in Health: Reducing health inequalities in the EU”. EPHA sent out a press release on the Communication and attended the press conference of the launch in Strasbourg. Please see the press release at. EPHA team will prepare a dossier on Health Inequalities, including the press release, consultation response, briefing on the Communication and response to the Communication.

Gender In response to the the Commission’s Consultation on its Gender Roadmap 2010, EPHA submitted a response based on the contributions from interested members. Please find the response here

Pharmaceutical Policy As one of its main objectives under Pharmaceutical policy, EPHA is calling for a move of pharmaceuticals and medical devices from the Enterprise and Industry portfolio to the Health Commissioner. This is also supported by external partners. This month, this campaign has moved ahead with a letter from the MEPs to President Barroso asking for the move. Please read further here.

Pharmacovigilance Following requests from the European Parliament for our position on pharmacovigilance, EPHA conducted a short but intensive consultation with members in order to update our previous position. Please find the new position here

Alcohol Policy Following the Special Workshop on the marketing of alcohol, held by the European Commission under the activities of the Alcohol Forum. Please find EPHA’s response to the consultation to the follow-up of this workshop here

EPHA was invited to meet with a representative from the Scottish Government on 19 October to discuss the minimum pricing for alcohol initiative. The same day, EPHA gave a presentation on the upcoming challenges in the health area at the European Union level in a meeting gathering NGOs active in the alcohol policy field.

Global Health During the final week of October, Action for Global Health held its Annual Meeting which convened all the Managers and Advocacy Officers across all six participating countries of the network. The meeting concentrated on the future of the network, as well as celebrating successes from the previous three years. The AFGH network is the number one development health network in Europe, and it is recognised in a number of significant EU and international processes as the interlocutor from civil society on these issues.

On October 8, 2009 EPHA co-chaired the second Global Health Policy Forum which was hosted and co-Chaired by the European Commission DG Development. The Global Health Policy Forum is a monthly lunchtime discussion forum hosted by the European Commission DG Development.

Amsterdam, 9 October 2009 - EPHA attended a conference on Ethnic Minorities and Fighting Sexually Transmittable Infections (STIs), including HIV across Europe.The event, entitled "United we stand !", covered a variety of issues and was an attempt by cross-Europe HIV organisations to bring together sexual and reproductive health (SRH), HIV, ethnic minorities, migration and religion. To read on please click here

Brussels, 23 October 2009 - EPHA attended an open seminar organised by Health Action International (HAI) - Europe. The seminar examined the European Union’s (EU) policies and actions in relation to medicines to provide an opportunity for multiple stakeholders to publicly debate their views. In particular, the EU "pharma package" and EU medicines’ trade-related policies were discussed. Please see the full article online here

Partnerships

European Food Standards Agency EFSA responded to EPHA (16 October) confirming that our application as members on their renewed stakeholder consultative platform has been accepted. EPHA has participated on this forum for a number of years. The next meeting of the forum will be in Parma, on 1 and 2 December 2009.

Cancer partnership The cancer partnership is a stakeholder forum working on cancer – other than lifestyle prevention which is covered in the Diet Platform. The Secretariat has submitted an application to participate in this partnership (14 October). More information can be found here

Partnerships with other NGOs EPHA was invited to participate in the COFACE European Seminar on Health Determinants in Monza on 10-11 October. EPHA gave a presentation on health determinants and partcipated in the COFACE working group discussions on pharmaceutical policy.

Stakeholder Dialogue Group In August 2009, the Monika Kosinska applied for membership to DG Sanco’s Stakeholder Dialogue Group. Membership of this group is on an individual, and not organizational basis and members are appointed for a two-year term. The group discusses issues of general interest to DG Sanco, such as transparency, consultation and participation in the work of DG Sanco, representation in DG Sanco processes and other issues. On 30 October, Monika was informed that she was successfully appointed to the group. The next meeting of the group will be held in November 2009.

Stakeholder Forum on Fair Data Collection EPHA has received advanced notice of a Stakeholder Forum on Fair Data Collection, to be convened in 2010. This is part of a piece of work undertaken by DG Sanco on practices by industry in using privacy and behavioural data on consumers for marketing and other uses. The Forum invites businesses to present to governments and NGOs on their practices, and will commit these industries to fair and appropriate use of data. Membership of the Forum will be on an organisational basis. The Executive Committee will discuss whether EPHA will participate in this Forum.

Spring Alliance Campaign The Spring Alliance is a participatory movement to ensure that the European Union puts people and planet first. It was created by three leading European civil society organisations: the European Environmental Bureau, the European Trade Union Confederation and Social Platform and was later joined by Concord (European NGO confederation for Relief and Development). EPHA is in the process of signing up to the manifesto

‘Prescription for a Healthy Planet’ The Health and Environment Alliance - where EPHA Secretary General is a Board member - launched its ‘Prescription for Healthy Planet calling to put health at the centre of talks and negotiations on climate change. EPHA will join the signatories of the Prescription from November 2009

NGO Coordination Meetings on Diet and Alcohol EPHA piloted a coordination meeting for participating NGOs (including EPHA members) in the Diet Platform in September. The coordination meeting was held before the Diet Platform meeting and was very successful, leading to a much higher participation in the meeting itself from across the NGO community. EPHA will roll this out for both the Diet Platform and Alcohol Forum (which will meet next on 12 November).

Staff

New team members EPHA held two competitive processes for the posts of Policy Officer for Health Systems and Policy Officer for EU Systems in October. We are delighted to announce that Nina Prunier, will be joining us as EU Systems Officer from 19 November, and Naroesha Jagessar will join us as Policy Officer for Health Systems from January 2010.

Members

Re-organisation of EPHA website At the end of October, EPHA started the process of reorganisation of the website to make it more user-friendly. The contractor will develop a site map for the new website which will be built as a ‘dummy’ site in early December, and will be tested by selected users until the end of January 2010. The successful tested version will be used as a template for the transfer over of the content on the current site throughout 2010 with the final version of the website becoming live at the end of 2010.

Professional Development Programme The 2009/2010 PDP was launched in October, with the induction week. There are 13 participants from amongst EPHA members and initial responses were very positive. EPHA’s PDP consists of 5 full days of presentations and training. During this week, EPHA had the pleasure to host Agnieszka Daval-Cichon working for DG SANCO and Ieva Valutyte from the European Parliament. The Introductory Week was an opportunity for the young professionals to deepen their knowledge on the European affairs.