New Board, New member!
Picture: From left to right - Radu Costin Ganescu, Marco Greco, Nicola Bedlington (Secretary General), Brian Charles West, Robert Andrew Johnstone, Anders Olauson, Pedro Montellano, Stanimir Hasurdjiev © EPF
The EPF 2015 Annual General Meeting took place in Brussels on 19 May, just before our Patient Empowerment Conference. This year again, we provided our members with the opportunity to meet, exchange and celebrate their being part of the European Patients’ Movement and welcome new members and faces to our community.
The Annual General Meeting (AGM) approves new membership applications and is the moment when our members vote to elect the EPF Board. We welcomed this year one new Full Member: the Flemish Patient Platform which we will present in the next issue of our newsletter.
We now proudly represent the interests of 65 official members, who are either specific chronic disease groups working at EU level or are national coalitions of patients.
A New Board Elected!
EPF members expressed once again their confidence in Robert Johnstone of National Voices UK, Marco Greco of the European Federation of Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis Associations (EFCCA) and Stanimir Hasardzhiev of the National Patients’ Organisation (NPO) in Bulgaria to shape the new Board.
We are delighted to welcome two new Board Members: Radu Ganescu of the Coalition of Patients' Organisations with Chronic Diseases (COPAC) and Pedro Montellano of the Global Alliance Of Mental Illness Advocacy Networks-Europe (GAMIAN-EUROPE).
Current Board Members, Brian West of the European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG) and Dominik Tomek of the Association for the Protection of Patients' Rights in Slovak Republic, as well as our President Anders Olauson of Eurordis and Vice-President Susanna Palkonen of the European Federation of Allergy and Airways Diseases Patients Associations (EFA) will continue their mandate for a further year.
Vida Augustiniene from the Lithuanian Diabetes Association was not re-elected this year, after six years as a Board Member. We wish to thank her wholeheartedly for her engagement and look forward working together with her in future EPF-related activities.
The AGM also approved the 2014 Annual Report which documents all our activities during the past year and also the 2015 Work Plan that outlines our focus of the next months.
Find all the pictures from the AGM here.
Contact: Nicola Bedlington, EPF Secretary General, nicola.bedlington@eu-patient.eu.