EFA - Annual Report 2021

Celebrating 30 years of EFA

In November, EFA celebrated its 30^th anniversary. Marking 30 years since eight organisations founded the federation in 1991. This anniversary confirms the legitimacy, professionalization and solidarity that has led EFA to grow to the current 42 Member Associations in 25 European countries.  

To commemorate the year and enter strongly into mid-adulthood, EFA looked back at past achievements to remember the dedicated work of its Boards, Members, and partner organisations. We were thrilled to have received wishes and memories from all stakeholders about their experience growing the organisations and collaborating with EFA.

Our look back of EFA’s history was published as a slideshow video series with our achievements, an article where EFA President Carla Jones summarises the past and envisions the future, and specific anniversary branding for our website and social media channels to mark the occasion. Thank you for sharing your stories and photos with us!

EFA’s website: efanet.org

EFA’s website continued to be our primary tool to inform our public and target audiences. The website is updated frequently with original EFA content about our work pillars INFORM | PREVENT | CARE, informing about the many activities we have conducted on policy and advocacy, projects, events and membership. In 2021, efanet.org reached 57,681 page visits, of which 46,770 were unique.

Throughout 2021, EFA’s website went through a full internal revamp, as we transitioned our domain, server, and Content Relations Manager (CRM) system which led to the improvement of EFA’s internal communications management.

In parallel, the EFA office also transitioned to Microsoft 365 and Microsoft SharePoint, and underwent a full IT device inventory and modernisation.

EFA’s newsletter

EFA’s newsletter continued to be sent quarterly in 2021 to over 500 recipients and providing them with in-depth analysis and reports of our work throughout the year:

In 2022 we will merge the EFA newsletter with the revamped CRM system for better managements of contacts to keep audiences up to date with EFA’s and members’ activities. We will also increase the number of subscribers interested in following EFA’s updates.

We posted timely and adapted content on our social media channels: Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook. EFA’s Twitter following increased by 114 new followers in 2021, with high-level followers from WHO and EU institutions. We also moved EFA to a professional Twitter account. On LinkedIn, EFA reached the milestone of 1,000 followers from many different profiles and covering many European countries. Recordings of EFA’s project activities such as the capacity building trainings and events at the European Parliament, were posted to EFA’s YouTube page. EFA will modernise its social media branding in 2022 to reflect the broad scope of work in advocating for patient needs.

World Atopic Eczema Day

Under this call, we invited healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers to show support on the day and use the campaign toolkit that we developed with key messaging and materials. The toolkit was free to download on the campaign website in Finnish, French, English, Slovenian, Spanish and Turkish.

Due to restrictions from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the campaign was fully digital. EFA launched a paid and organic social media campaign on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, which unfortunately did not have the reach that we were aiming at as several platforms banned messages on atopic eczema due to new, unclear considerations of health concerns in social networks.