High-level policy making event “BUILDING AN IDEAHL EUROPE” at European parliament. Focus on digital empowerment and health literacy, co-sponsored by WHO Europe.

On 7 March, the IDEAHL Consortium organised at the European Parliament in Brussels a high-level policy event, “Building an IDEAHL Europe”, focused on digital empowerment and health literacy. The goal was to engage and gain support of the policy-makers for the development of the European digital health literacy (d)HL strategy and its long-term sustainability, which is the aim of the IDEAHL (Improving Digital Empowerment for Active Healthy Living) project, funded under the Horizon Europe programme of the European Commission.

The event was organized by the Central European Initiative – Executive Secretariat, IDEAHL project partner, and co-sponsored by the WHO Office for Europe which had recently launched the Regional Digital Health Action Plan for the WHO European Region, where digital health literacy is a strategic objective.

The director of the Division of Country Health Policies and Systems at WHO Europe, Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat – who opened the event together with CEI Deputy Secretary General Nina Kodelja – the member of the European Parliament, Elena Lizzi and the representative from European Commission – stressed the importance of strengthening digital literacy skills and capacity-building in the general population, as well as the health workforce through digital health literacy programmes.

Representatives of the IDEAHL Consortium also highlighted the important role digital health literacy played, defining it as a key challenge for a more inclusive society, and stressing that by strengthening European cooperation through IDEAHL we can contribute to creating conditions for promoting the health agenda for the wellbeing of European citizens. To do so strategic partnerships and collaboration with policy-makers are fundamental to link practices and policies to maximise the project’s impact in promoting healthier lifestyles, better health and interaction with health professionals across Europe.

The member of European Parliament Elena Lizzi highlighted, in particular, the importance of involving policy-makers, thus the European Parliament, as regards Horizon Europe projects, such as IDEAHL; she also pointed out that d(HL) was a crucial part of the Data Act which was currently being finalised and would soon be submitted to the European Parliament for its final approval.

During the event project partners explained the preliminary findings of the on-going activities as well as the roadmap for the co-creation of the strategy at European level. An interesting co-creation session with project partners and policy makers was held to identify the main barriers and areas for improvement in the field of (d)HL.

Thanks to the active involvement of the participants, the session resulted in a fruitful state-of-the-art analysis that will allow the development of concrete interventions to be included in the European (d)HL Strategy.

The whole event was attended by around 150 policy-makers, representatives of national and regional authorities, academia, as well as regional organisations, such as the South Eastern Europe Health Network, dealing with health issues. Best practices from institutions, country and regional examples were also presented, in order to foster further exchange of experience in this area.

Contacts: apuzzo@cei.int