PAE News
Expert Group on the Societal Impact of Pain
As announced during SIP 2017 by Martin Seychell, Deputy Director-General of DG Santé, a new Expert group has been open on the EU Health Policy Platform to facilitate communication between the stakeholders on the societal impact of pain, e.g. what member states need, what stakeholders identify as priorities among these initiatives and what they propose, but also to find out how the EU Commission may use the tools available at the European level in order to support initiatives in this domain. This is how stakeholders can be an active part in policy making, communicating and influencing other sectors and groups (e.g. professionals) in an exchange that would benefit to all parties involved and to society in general as it fills the gap between discussions and implementation.
Mr Seychell announced as well that a first batch of proposals to be taken forward will be approved on the next physical meeting of the Health Policy Platform on the 15th November, so it is very important to bring your contribution on the platform already before this date.
Pain Alliance and European Pain Federation EFIC are responsible together for the administration of the discussion group on the societal impact of pain.
Here below we bring you some information on what the EU Health Policy Platform is, what is the position of Expert Groups and how you can contribute to conveying the message on the importance of meeting the challenges raised by pain patients, to the decision makers.
EU Health Policy Platform Objectives
The EU Health Policy Platform aims to:
• Provide a framework for a dialogue between the Commission and stakeholders;
• Facilitate targeted discussions between the Commission services and stakeholders;
• Ensure transparency in the health policy dialogue;
• Contribute to building knowledge and expertise on public health issues;
• Support dissemination of information on DG SANTE projects (i.e. co-funded Health Programme projects, including Joint Actions);
• Identify, share and encourage replication of good practices related to health policy;
• Gather and circulate research outcomes and ease the availability of results and outcomes to interested stakeholders;
• Provide information on other policy areas related to health following the “Health in All Policies” approach.
EU Health Policy Platform Structure
EU Health Policy Platform operates through the following two axes:
• Web Platform – to enable online discussion and collaboration;
• Face-to-face meetings – to host targeted thematic discussions.
EU Health Policy Web Platform
The Web Platform
The Web Platform is a collaborative tool to ease the communication between
the Commission services and health stakeholders. It is aimed to be inclusive
and to reflect geographical and sectors’ diversity of the participants. The
working language is English.
Registration
To register on the EU Health Policy Web Platform, users have to create an
account in the European Commission Authentication System (ECAS). To
create this account, please click here.
To ensure transparency, usernames on the EU Health Policy Platform are
created automatically including the name of the person and the organisation for
which the user works. Multiple individuals from a particular organisation may
take part in the Web Platform. This enables the organisation to be present in
whichever networks they choose to join with various representatives.
Following the application, DG SANTE moderators verify compliance of the
applicants according to the criteria, and grant access to the Web Platform.
Structure of the Web Platform
The Web Platform consists of a public webpage and three sections:
- The public webpage, containing general information on the EU Health
Policy Platform – allows the public at large to access information made
available. - The Agora network is an open discussion area accessible to all
stakeholders who registered in the Web Platform. - Thematic Networks are networks accessible to stakeholders to facilitate
their drafting of joint statements on chosen health issues - EU Expert and Stakeholder Groups network(s)
EU Expert and Stakeholder Groups network(s) are networks only accessible for members of existing DG SANTE’s EU Experts and Stakeholder groups. The Platform will assist them to prepare their meetings, benefit from interaction with other groups and provide a means of continued discussion between their meetings.
You are encouraged to bring to this platform as many stakeholders as possible and to be active on the platform starting from today in order to support our mission, making the chronic pain patients’ voice heard.
