Through our projects, EFA built strong and unprecedented partnerships in 2021, including new partnerships with opinion leaders on atopic eczema through our ‘Consensus Committee’ project who will deliver a report on the Burden of Atopic Eczema in Europe. We also cemented existing partnerships through, for example, the collaboration of the ‘European Lung Health Group’ to advance our shared goals for patients and healthcare professionals under the BREATHE Coalition, a project launched in 2020.
We increased our sustainable corporate partnerships from 13 to 15 partners. To deepen the partnership and collaboration, EFA organised a virtual annual meeting with corporate partners, the new EFA Board and staff in September 2021 to report on our progress and to present the plans for 2022. This collaborative meeting offered insight from our funders on measuring the success and impact of our projects. It gave greater focus to EFA in delivering its vision for a Europe where all EFA patients have the right to best quality of care, safe environment and are involved on all decisions on their health.
EFA’s partnership with GlobalSkin resulted in a growing and concerted movement for the 4th Global Atopic Eczema Day with the theme ‘Unite for Atopic Eczema’. We involved healthcare professionals as well as patients and caregivers for this call, which is expected to grow in future editions. With the European Patients Forum, our core partner in EU policy related to care, we worked closely on several medicines and digital health EU policies and legislations where EFA has specific interest.
EFA participated to more than 100 partner events and advisory groups, including the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) advocates gathering and the several WHO Europe meetings held throughout the year with non-state actors. In these meetings our rationale was to bring the BREATHE Vision for 2030 and our objectives and deliverables on INFORM | PREVENT | CARE on allergy, asthma and COPD to the core of key initiatives and policy. We look forward to further participation in these meetings in 2022.
EFA thanks our key partners the ERS and ELF, EUIPF, Cystic Fibrosis Europe, PHA Europe, Tuberculosis Europe, Alpha 1 Belgium on behalf of European alpha1 groups, EAACI, Atopic Eczema Consensus Committee members, in particular Prof. Wollenberg and Joana Camillo, ADERMAP, the co-chairs, European Patients’ Forum, ENSP, Global Skin,
EFA sincerely thanks our sustainable corporate partners Aimmune, Abbvie, AstraZeneca, BI, Chiesi, DBV Technologies, GSK, Leo Pharma, MSD, Novartis, OM Pharma, Pfizer, Regeneron, Roche, Sanofi Genzyme, Sanofi-Regeneron Alliance