PAE News
Brain Mind and Pain Interest group meeting, November 29 in the European Parliament.
On the 29th November, the European Parliament interest group on Brain Mind and Pain had its last breakfast meeting of 2016. The meeting was hosted and chaired by MEP Jeroen Lenears and attended by around 50 people. The discussion was about the relationship between work and employment.
Presentations were given by Antonella Cardone, executive director of Fit For Work Global Alliance and by Boglárka Bola from the prevention and research unit of EU-OSHA. Both addressed European projects on the ability of people to return to work, to stay in work and the issue of safety at work.
Chris Wells, president of EPF/EFIC, stated their support and willingness to help with initiatives to achieve this.
Paul Baart from Fit For Work showed the results of their project and emphasized that doing projects is nice and successful, but implementation of these results on a larger scale is very difficult because of the way the systems are built. This relates to the written declaration which was initiated by the Brian Mind and Pain interest group on ‘access to employment for those affected by neurological disorders and chronic pain conditions’.
Jeroen Lenears who chaired this meeting said how the big turn-out emphasized that this topic has a huge interest of the members of the European Parliament. Work, staying in work or finding work is for everyone is a better option for the person involved, for his family, for the employer for society. Everyone benefits from that.
Staying in the job often can be achieved by simple solutions and we, the stakeholders should be able to find smart solutions for that. Some solutions were brought forward during the presentations at this event and in earlier discussions.
MEP Elena Gentile, also a great supporter of the written declaration, emphasized the need of collaboration between the stakeholders and mentioned the relation between the patients and their loved ones is one of the most important reasons to support any activity in this direction.
After this breakfast meeting several of the attendees visited their national MEPs in the Parliament building, in order to gain their support on the written declaration.
