Projects
We collaborate with other public health and social actors on many European and international projects and Joint Actions.
Through our project work, we enable collaboration. We help design policy, drive implementation, and advance research in the field of health inequalities and determinants of health.
Current Projects and Joint Actions
We are part of or support the following projects and Joint Actions.
Have a look at an overview of all projects in which we are involved here.
The Erasmus+ BeWell project “Blueprint alliance for a future hEalth Workforce stratEgy on digital and green skiLLs” (2022-2025) aims to build a movement of healthcare stakeholders which support and contribute to the development, implementation, and upscaling of a strategy on the upskilling and reskilling of the European health workforce. This would entail addressing the skills needed to support the digital and green transition within the health ecosystem at local, regional, national, and ultimately at the European level (through the Pact for Skills).
By addressing the existing skill mismatches and strengthening competencies, the project will enable the health workforce to be better prepared to face future challenges and adapt to ever-evolving societal contexts. To this end, the BeWell project will build comprehensive curricula and training programmes targeting all professionals of the health workforce, including health students, health professionals and professionals of emerging occupations.
EuroHealthNet will strongly support the development of skills intelligence, which amongst others includes the identification and analysis of existing upskilling and reskilling initiatives across the EU. Through that, we will contribute to the blueprint skills strategy by focusing on the inclusion of skills for public health as well as ensuring that the strategy is underpinned by a health and social equity lens. This will also be our focus within the piloted educational and training programmes designed to upskill and reskill health professionals.
The project is being led by the European Health Management Association.
Blue Adapt is a new Horizon Europe project led by the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), which will kick off in October 2022. It will investigate the impacts of climate change on coastal waters, and assess and quantify the associated human health risks. Project partners will develop an extended One Health conceptual framework which will link with existing models of ecological public health, and take into account health equity considerations. Seven case studies across Europe will investigate different adaptation options and identify potential facilitators and barriers to actions to reduce human health risks from coastal pathogens. BlueAdapt will develop tools for policymakers and citizens, such as early warning systems and safe swimming apps.
Mentality (“Implementing MENTal Health QuALITY Practices”) is an EU4Health funded project running from January 2023 – February 2025. This project will address the mental health impacts of COVID-19, by piloting established European promising practices, to create a path for successful and sustainable transfer and adaptation of practices in participating countries. This process will also lead to in country upscale and further future implementation in other EU countries.
EuroHealthNet is a key partner in the consortium for the project, focusing on the transfer and implementation of good practices in the field of mental health and social inclusion. The Mentality project will pilot established European practices targeted at five groups of populations in need: (1) children, (2) healthcare and other care workers, (3) people with pre-existing mental health problems, (4) those in need of community-based services and service providers, as well as (5) migrants. These initiatives will be transferred to five participating EU Member States.
The goal of Invest4Health (“Mobilising novel finance models for health promotion and disease prevention”) is to incentivise new ways of financing health promotion and disease prevention, using a model called ‘smart capacitating investment’ (SCI), where the financial benefits to health and other sectors outweigh the initial costs and give a sustainable return on investment.
The specific objectives are:
- To draw on available evidence to strengthen how smart capacitating investment is framed and communicated
- To assess and enhance organisational readiness for testing SCI models in regional test-beds in Spain, Germany, Sweden and the UK
- To develop and test business models that are compatible with SCI
- To develop and test novel finance models to determine which of the business models align with pre-defined contingencies for delivering SCI
- To develop and test a prototype collaborative platform for governing SCI in health promotion and prevention.
EuroHealthNet will lead a work package on ‘Operational readiness and capacity building,’ which aims to achieve (1) stronger cooperation between health systems, public health entities, and other key actors; (2) support integration of locally-run and financially sustainable interventions, and (3) support decision and policymakers to bring about change in financing health promotion. Other key tasks include supporting the development of a conceptual framework for smart capacitating investment. Overall, work will build on the existing eGuide for Financing Health Promotion, as well as best practices identified in the guide and through other projects (e.g., JA CHRODIS PLUS).
BEST-COST is a research project aiming to improve methodologies for understanding the socioeconomic cost of environmental stressors, with a focus on air and noise pollution. It is conducted by a consortium of 17 partners from Europe and the USA to gather expertise on environmental burden of disease (BOD) assessment.
The results of BEST-COST will include:
- An improved BOD framework for estimating the health impact of environmental stressors;
- an improved methodology for the monetisation of BOD estimates of environmental stressors;
- a coherent methodological framework to assess social inequalities in the socio-economic cost of environmental stressors.
These results will help to harmonise socioeconomic assessments of environmental stressors across Europe and lead towards enhanced economic and health modelling in policy at the European, national and local level.
BEST-COST is funded by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). EuroHealthNet will lead on Work Package 9 on communications, dissemination and exploitation activities.
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Resonate is a four-year Research and Innovation project funded by Horizon Europe examining the health, environmental, economic and social impacts of so-called ‘green care’, ‘nature-based social prescribing’ or ‘Nature-based Therapy (NbT)’ interventions. The project includes a review of interventions globally, nine NbT Case Studies, and three Social Innovation Actions which will develop nature-based resilience hubs to demonstrate best-practice for scaling-up and scaling-out successful interventions. The goal is to provide practical guidelines and tools for NbT implementation and is expected to have a significant impact on the future development and use of NbTs in health and social care across Europe. Resonate is co-ordinated by the University of Vienna.
EuroHealthNet is leading a Work Package analysing the health equity impacts of the project’s case studies, and developing greater clarity about the concerns, challenges, barriers, needs, and opportunities of nature-based therapy to improve health and wellbeing, to be able to provide guidance to health professionals and to increase nature-based therapy uptake.
FEAST aims to catalyse Europe’s just transition to a ‘Win-Win-Win-Win’ food system that sees major gains for people, the planet, and the public and private sectors.
Through HORIZON-CL6-2021-FARM2FORK-01-15, we aim to support European food systems to shift away from the current ‘Lose-Lose-Lose-Win’ food systems that sees only large food corporations ‘winning’ at the expense of enormous negative consequences for the environment, health and the public sector. FEAST aims to advance the state of the art by leveraging current best practice and co-designing novel solutions throughout Europe with food system stakeholders, including diverse vulnerable groups, to identify how they can be supported and empowered to facilitate and benefit from the just transition to healthier and more sustainable dietary behaviour – at all levels (micro, meso and macro) and in all sectors (producers, distributors, retailers and consumers) of the food system.
EuroHealthNet is leading FEAST Policy Work Package (WP7), where the aim is to co-design policy recommendations using a policy dialogue methodology underpinned by scientific evidence to facilitate stakeholder engagement and the transition towards healthy and sustainable diets. The policy recommendations (incorporated in a Policy Road Map, Synthesis Report and Policy Briefs) will focus on how to overcome policy constraints to innovation, and opportunities at different policy levels, involving different food system actors, to achieve a fairer/more equal transition to health and sustainable diets .
Label2Enable (May 2022 – 2024) aims at supporting the development and implementation of the EU quality label for health apps. The project builds on the work on the ISO 82304–2 label (inspired by the EU Energy Label and the Nutri-Score front-of-pack nutrition label), which defines requirements for good quality health and wellness apps that can be used by health professionals and patient/citizen.
The project aims to better inform:
- patients, citizens, and carers who seek to use health apps
- health care professionals who seek to recommend or prescribe apps
- regional and national health care systems who seek to reimburse apps
- regulatory authorities who seek to approve use and reimbursement of apps
The project will foster trust on health apps, helping to identify trustworthy applications that are adequately evaluated against predetermined standards by independent entities. The label should make stand out health apps that are legally compliant, protect doctor-patient confidentiality, and meet data security requirements.
Label2Enable also aims at supporting an equal use of health apps. The use of health apps is indeed not yet inclusive. The biggest Users of such apps are found predominantly among younger, more educated and more eHealth literate populations, leaving others underserved and unaware of the benefits they provide. Label2Enable will engage in social policy and stakeholder engagement to enable all patients, citizens, and carers to (consider to) use apps, thanks to the label, supporting communication and trusted recommendations.
The project will also foster the adoption of the label by health care systems and authorities as well as app stores, app libraries and other sources who (seek to) store apps, with the goal of having a cross country recognition. As a result, successful apps that have already been assessed in one country would become available to other countries, enhancing the health sector in the EU and paving the ground to sustainable, equitable and resilient health ecosystem.
Funded by the Horizon 2020 Research Programme, RIVER-EU is a 5-year (2021-2026) project coordinated by the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG). RIVER-EU collects evidence on health system determinants of high and low vaccine uptake in eight specific contexts, which will be used to identify and/or develop interventions to reduce barriers to vaccine uptake in underserved communities and increase trust in the health system.
The PSLifestyle project aims to help close the action gap between climate awareness and individual action, and to increase citizen participation in sustainability topics. It does this by engaging citizens through a digital application to collect, monitor and analyse their environment and consumption data as well as co-research, co-develop, and uptake everyday life solutions for climate change.
EuroHealthNet’s main role is to focus on developing an inclusive participant recruitment and engagement strategy for the PSL living labs, which take place across 2022-2023. The recruitment and engagement strategy supports the eight partner countries to bring together a diverse group of participants in their living labs, ensuring that a variety of perspectives are represented in the discussion outcomes, and serve to co-create the PSL online tool.
Later in the project, EuroHealthNet will develop a PSLifestyle Learnings Cookbook, which will compile relevant outcomes from across project activities to exploit the findings and support the future implementation of PSLifestyle in new locations. EuroHealthNet also plays an active role in the communication and dissemination of the project, developing a video as well as four policy briefs to advocate for sustainable change at local, national and European level.
The main goal of Icehearts Europe is to integrate mental health into the grassroots of sport programmes, aiming to benefit the wellbeing of vulnerable children. By scaling up at European level, Icehearts aims to do this by using the Finnish Icehearts model, which uses team sports as a tool for engaging children with social work. The scale up at European level will be achieved by bringing a group of five grassroot sport partners together, from five pilot implementation countries (early adopters) and a group of expertise and associate partners (next adopters).
Results are expected both within the first 18 months of the project and in the long-term. The short-term impacts will be achieved by the early adopters implementation of the refined Icehearts model, while its implementation in additional countries by the next adopters will guarantee the long-term impact. Finally, by involving a wider group of stakeholders from the sport, health and education sectors, Icehearts Europe expects to contribute to policy changes at national level.
EuroHealthNet’s goal is to involve a wider group of stakeholders from the sport, health and education sectors to facilitate more substantial implementation as well as effective advocacy efforts and policy changes in the national settings, as the experience and evidence from piloting countries start to roll in. EuroHealthNet will mainly contribute to Work Package (WP3) focused on gathering and assessing information about the reality of opportunities and barriers in each pilot country to implement the Icehearts model. The final goal is to the implement the developed Icehearts model in 5 European countries.
Schools4Health (2023-2026) is an EU4Health-funded project which aims to introduce, strengthen, and sustain the adoption of a health promoting school (HPS) approach and other whole school approaches to health. It will invest in good practices on healthy nutrition, physical activity and mental health to improve health literacy and equity, broadly contributing to the common principles of these health-promoting approaches. It will engage approximately 16 schools across the EU in a process of selection, transfer, implementation, and evaluation of good practices, with special consideration to school settings in deprived areas.
Schools4Health will demonstrate how HPS approaches not only put children and adolescents on a path to healthier lifestyles, but also improve educational outcomes and equity, as well as help address inter-related societal challenges like climate change. It will therefore also engage with policymakers and practitioners, drawing their attention to, and setting out, what they can do to promote health at school. An online awareness-raising and information campaign will be launched to support these efforts, together with the creation of a Schools4Health hub, centralising resources created and collected throughout this initiative.
Led by EuroHealthNet, the consortium is made up of 13 partners from 10 countries (Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Slovenia, and Spain). Partner organisations and their respective networks represent vast expertise in the fields of school health and health promotion, with experience working with local/regional/national authorities and school settings to promote healthy school environments.
Dialogical-Work (2022-2024) is an Erasmus+ project that aims to promote integrated approaches in governance models within public settings. Gathering more than 40 people from across the EU and coordinated by the Emilia Romagna Region in Italy, the project responds to the challenges of aligning the competencies of health, social and education professionals to the evolving complex needs in changing societies. It will provide professionals and other actors with the skills needed to work in an inter-sectoral environment enabling them to face multiple societal challenges in a coordinated way.
Six training modules are planned throughout the project. Two orientation modules to prepare the setting out of Training Labs that will support the early implementation of dialogical approaches within and between organisations in order to foster organisational changes that are sustainable over time. Four formation modules foresee educating tutors to create multi-professional teams that can adapt their work practices to a changing and integrated environment.
EuroHealthNet has an advisory role as well as being involved in the evaluation of the project.
Previous Projects and Joint Actions
IMMUNION’s purpose is to improve equitable vaccine uptake by strengthening collaboration between healthcare professionals, public health authorities, the media and local communities. IMMUNION will contribute to and complement wider EU vaccination efforts through delivering better education to health professionals and better information to the general public.
The Intersectoral Health and Environment Research for Innovation (
EuroHealthNet was part of the Consortium that under a service contract with the European Commission 
RARHA
The aim of AFE-INNOVNET is to set up a large EU wide community of local and regional authorities and other relevant stakeholders across the EU who want to work together to find smart and innovative evidence based solutions to support active and healthy ageing and develop age-friendly environments across the EU.
The DRIVERS project addressed the strategic Determinants to Reduce health Inequity Via 1) Early childhood development, 2) Realising fair employment, and 3) Social protection. The research reviewed evidence and the methods to assess the impact of policies and programmes in these three areas relating to health inequities, it developed new methods and evidence, and provided policy recommendations and advocacy guidance.
CHAIN is a leading centre and research network for the international study of global health inequalities, based at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). It brings together the most prominent researchers in the field of health determinants, civil society and the UN system to advance health inequalities research and reduce the distance between research and other fields.
The new European Joint Action on Chronic Diseases and Promoting Healthy Ageing across the Life Cycle (CHRODIS-JA) aims to promote and facilitate a process of exchange and transfer of good practices between European countries and regions, addressing chronic conditions, with a specific focus on health promotion and prevention of chronic conditions, multi-morbidity and diabetes. Health promotion and prevention will focus on behavioural risk factor, social determinants and inequalities in health.
CHRODIS PLUS
EuroHealthNet worked within a consortium of partners on the ESIF for Health project to explore the impacts the ESIF had on health in 2014-2020 period by mapping Member State programming and project spending. The idea was to uncover the extent to which the funds are supporting different types of health-related interventions. The project also compared spending trends with the main EU policy objectives, as well as relevant national objectives set out in the European Semester process, which coordinates economic, fiscal, and recently social policy across the EU. The objectives relate to the need to manage public spending pressures that have been caused by population ageing and the growing prevalence of chronic diseases. They also refer to encouraging labour participation by preventing health-related exits from the workforce.
EuroHealthNet was part of the FP7 project – IROHLA, which aims to take stock of on-going health literacy programmes and projects. It made use of knowledge and experience of programmes in other sectors (e.g. private and social sectors) to be applied to the health sector. The project identified, validated and presented a set of max 20 interventions, which together constitute a comprehensive approach for addressing health literacy needs of the ageing population in Europe. These interventions have been part of an evidence-based guideline for policy and practice for local, regional and national government authorities to start action. The project involved representatives of the ageing population, academia, all levels of governments, the business community and other stakeholders to ensure that feasibility, usefulness and effectiveness of the selected interventions.
A Joint Action was a project funded within the EU Public Health Action Programme which is for participating Member States only and their nominated representative partners. The challenge for this Joint Action was to assist the Member States to develop tools to better enable health inequalities to be addressed in cross-government policy making, to access the evidence, and to engage with key stakeholders especially regions. Much of the work is mapping and consensus building and is a practical approach to taking forward the EU Communication, building on earlier work on Health Impact Assessments (HIA), Health in All Policies (HiAP), and modeling. The project will develop a common understanding of a Health in All Policies approach, and its application at EU, MS and sub-national level. EuroHealthNet is involved in the establishment of a regional network which will identify through a case study approach the focus, information, resources, drivers, opportunities and barriers to regional action on HI, and access to structural funds. Recommendations will be made to inform the future application of structural funds.
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Best-ReMaP is a Europe-wide Joint Action that seeks to contribute to the creation of an environment that ensures healthy food for a healthy future by helping to improve the quality of food supplied to citizens of Europe. It is funded by the European Union’s Health Programme, and implemented by 36 partners in 24 EU Member States, and delivered via collaborative work of seven pan-European teams.
