EFA aspires to further empower its members to become effective and independent allergy and chronic respiratory disease patient advocates. To increase capacity, EFA supports patient groups by creating opportunities, providing knowledge, and enabling the exchange of best practices.
Annual Meet and Greet the EU Institutions workshop
EFA hosts an annual ‘Meet & Greet the EU institutions workshop’. The programme aims to increase members’ knowledge of the EU institutions and relevant legislation affecting asthma, allergy, and COPD patients.
Through meetings with Members of the European Parliament, the EFA Meet & Greet workshop also increases the number of patient groups active in the EU decision making process.
EFA Targeted training
Every year EFA identifies one or more patients’ groups that hope to strengthen their competences and skills. The training sessions are designed according to the patient groups’ specific needs to support them in running a successful patient association at national or local level.
2020
EFA Allergy and Respiratory Patients Digital Conference
In 2020, EFA organised the Allergy and Respiratory Patients digital Conference, a two-days event to give aglance into the latest innovation in research and care for Allergy and Respiratory patients, shedding light on the potential of digitalisation to improve the treatment and management of allergy, asthma, and COPD.
Digitalisation can play an important role in shifting healthcare from being disease-centred to patient-centred. But it also presents challenges in terms of regulations, policy framework and access. With the Allergy and Respiratory Patients Conference, EFA wanted to focus on the power of digitalisation and innovation to improve health services across Europe and empower allergy and respiratory patients in managing their care.
More than 150 participants from all over the world followed the event online and had the possibility to engage with speakers and experts working on allergy, asthma, and COPD.EFA members and patients’ groups had also the opportunity to participate to trainings to increase their digital literacy.
You can find more details here.
Meet & Greet the EU
The Meet & Greet EU training, part of the Capacity Building Programme 2020, helped to build and guide the advocacy skills of EFA members, taking into consideration the current political setting, especially in view of the increased space that the health debate has gained in the European Union. The training gave members the skills and the tools to build up their own advocacy strategy, to maximise their policy influence towards Members of the European Parliament. Read more.
Previous editions
2019
In 2019 EFA organised a series of webinars for EFA membersto strengthen their skills on the use of social media for advocacy and awareness-raising, leveraging International Days at the national level, the role of patient organisations in collecting and sharing patients’ data for research and transparency and democracy in advocacy.
2018
In 2018, EFA organised a series of webinars addressed to EFA members. The webinars covered a wide range of topics including fundraising, governance, communication, membership, project management and advocacy. During the webinars, participants were trained by external experts and invited to share their best practices.