EFA’s primary aim is to give a voice to patients in Europe.
EFA represents patients with allergy, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) when interacting with EU decision makers. Advocacy allows for constructive participation and integration of patients’ perspective in the relevant EU policy formulation. EFA follows up and communicates EU policy developments to all of its member associations. Communication between the EFA secretariat and EFA members enables the sharing of best practices and the development of EU-wide guidelines on the basis of such best practices. EFA represents patients in EU funded research and health projects. Through project management, EFA ensures that patients’ perspective is integrated into research projects, where expertise is given but real life considerations can potentially be neglected. EFA provides feedback to policy-makers on several pieces of legislation and political documents, produces internal briefing texts and external policy papers and responds to public consultations launched by the European Commission.
EFA is then advocating towards the EU policy-makers for EFA’s funded projects, such as the Oxygen Harmonisation project (which focuses on the inequalities that exist in relation to the availability of oxygen during travel on commercial airlines for people with airways diseases), the COPD project (devoted to raising awareness for COPD both among the public and amongst policy-makers to make it a greater political priority in Europe) and the Allergy Awareness project (which aims at increasing the awareness of allergy as a serious chronic disease).