EPF Access Working Group Meeting – 28 February 2017

The EPF Access Working Group met last Tuesday for its first meeting in 2017, following the EPF Access Campaign’s kick-off meeting in the European Parliament the previous day.

The meeting in the Parliament provided a lot of food for thought for all members of the working group and led into a very productive day. Here is some of what we discussed to give you a flavour of our meeting.

• The working group adopted its work plan for 2017 and reviewed the Access Campaign kick-off meeting along with ideas for the December 2017 Campaign meeting.
• An important topic was the Access Campaign’s political document that will be published at the end of the year. Some time was spent reviewing its format, focus and content.
• It is clear that this is a very big campaign and for it to be successful it needs to be covered at European, national and population levels. Futhermore it cant be achieved in a single year, hence it is in line with the UN target of achieving universal health coverage by 2030. This requires the Group to think long term and see the bigger picture and also how these plans fit into EPF’s access activities.
• In the afternoon, the EPF communications team presented their proposals for the campaign which led to considerable discussion on how to make the most of the campaign and how best to involve EPF’s members. More ideas will be presented at the AGM in April.
• The day ended with Lilyana Chavdarova who provided an update on PACT – The Patient Access Partnership and the considerable work that is being delivered through the MEPs and their support for Access to universal health.

Many thanks to all working group members for their extremely valuable thoughts and contributions and for a very interesting day.

For any questions or further information, please do not hesitate to contact katie.gallagher@eu-patient.eu.