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UREGHA is an organization that brings together regional and local health authorities across Europe. At this stage, we have 24 members covering 14 countries and over 50 million citizens in terms of care delivered by by our members with very active, of course, in, in collaborative initiatives and projects. We’re based in Brussels, so very much connected also to what’s happening at European level in the EU health policy arena.

We work a lot on cancer, on digital transformation, on cross-border health, and of course these are also very much connected to the topic immunization. Digital transformation can facilitate reaching out to different digital tools that can help mapping and providing information about immunization. Related to cancer, there are vaccine-preventable cancers and when we speak about cross-border health, we are in a situation where we’re moving across Europe so it’s important also to take that into consideration when we discuss about immunization. Related to the topic of immunization firstly we need the workforce. Indeed, to promote and to be the first connection on the topic, we need skills and literacy to understand why vaccination is important. And we need to focus on promotion and prevention to also invest in immunization. We try to work on this topic together with with our members, which are the Departments of health of regional authorities, but also life science cluster organizations that bring together municipalities and so on. Another element of what we do is overcoming obstacle to vaccination, that is of huge importance to while working with with stakeholders and partners.

We are always happy to create dialogue with the regions, but also with the other stakeholders, not only with several parts of the European Commission, but also with the European Committee of the regions, where we work with elected politicians from across Europe, from municipalities, regions and so on, on a so-called interregional group on health and well-being.

 

 

 

Michele Calabro, Director at EUREGHA  (European Regional and Local Health Authorities)

 

 

The project that I would like to bring attention is a project that started a few years ago and it’s going to continue until mid next year. It’s called „Overcoming obstacles to vaccination“. The topic is really on and it’s a project funded by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). It doesn’t have a specific vaccination focus, but really covers from COVID-19 to tetanus, measles etc. This project was identified and started from the fact that there’s an observed decline in vaccination coverage in recent years in several EU Member States that led to several vaccine preventable diseases outbreaks. COVID-19 clearly put this even more on the agenda and thus the Commission, through this initiative, started to look at what could be done. What are the obstacles that are creating this situation? Where’s the confidence, why it’s not happening, but also from the point of view of really technically issues- what’s happening in the countries? Why we don’t have a perfect coverage?

The work of the project is still ongoing and you can find more information on the website https://overcomingobstaclestovaccination.eu/

We have three key areas. One is identifying these obstacles of physical, practical and administrative. Is it because geographical distance from the center of vaccination, is it financial affordability? Is it a matter of availability of healthcare professionals? So this is one element- to identify these issues.

Second is identifying practices that are tackling these issues. Is it something that we can solve by looking at what regions are doing already to tackle this situation.

And three, what the project is working on is- identifying recommendations.

 

 

SOURCE// https://overcomingobstaclestovaccination.eu/en/publications/vaccination-barriers-identified-across-member-states

 

 

 

A study was made by the project to really identify the primary and secondary barriers to these challenges, and where there is an issue in terms of convenience of vaccination system, where there is an issue of geographical proximity to vaccination system or supply of vaccine is a matter of bottleneck and supply chain, or is it a matter of information awareness to the public? This is a very good starting point that was covering all EU27 Member States. The second bit are the best practices, something that we believe a lot in  while working with regional authorities. We’re very happy that our part in this project will mostly about this, to try to identify some authorities in the network of EUREGHA that had some brilliant idea, to put in place some brilliant actions to tackle this problem, essentially.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For instance, the project named Su-Pr-Eme. focuses on providing healthcare and vaccination services to undocumented, in particular seasonal workers, addressing the unique challenges and accessing medical care when they are in a specific region, even for just few months.

There are also mobile health units delivering vaccination service really directly to remote agricultural areas, ensuring accessibility for migrant workers or in the place where they’re working, when they are coming to to Europe without having maybe an understanding of where they can get vaccination that they need in terms of their age and activities that they do.

There is large importance of collaborative efforts between local health authorities, NGOs on the ground and community leaders. It’s always important to work on the regional and local level, so we can really understand the peculiarity of the environment in which we work and reality we need to connect with- to create those coalitions that are very much necessary for taking immunization forward.