"United we are stronger", EFA President Breda Flood
The year 2013 was a milestone for EFA as both the team and EFA Members set up the basis for future work. On the policy side, EFA launched its own Manifesto for the 2014 European
Parliament elections, in an effort to bring to the political scene more visibility to EFA’s asks and fields of activity. In that sense, our advocacy initiatives were inspired by the guidelines presented on the Manifesto, namely on EU health, environment and research policies.
Our annual training for EFA members on EU health related policy was once again a success and it demonstrated that EFA’s role in capacity building is vital to increase our collective impact. We joined the club of Brussels health non-governmental organisations active on Twitter, a tool that has proven to be a great direct channel to connect, inform and promote directly with policy makers, partners and our members. Perhaps the biggest challenge was the successful application and final agreement for the EU core funding for 2014, which supports our funding diversity and therefore sustainability. Finally, we welcomed a new member from Portugal, RESPIRA who represents people with COPD and fostered relations with inactive and potential members in Croatia, Malta and Portugal.Our consistent search for patient representation was reinforced EU policy developments on air quality, clinical trials, tobacco control and medical devices among others. 2013 was a landmark for our own projects as we published the `Minimum Standards of care for COPD patients in Europe´, and our booklet on ‘Enabling Air Travel with Oxygen in Europe’. We also partnered in five innovative EU research projects focused in advancing our knowledge and personalized care in allergy and respiratory diseases. We organised a landmark event at the European Parliament for a project on health based ventilation guidelines for Europe.
We would like to thank EFA members, our office team, supporting EU policy makers at the Parliament, Commission and the Council, partners and last but never least, our ten sustainable funding partners. The complete 2013 EFA Annual Report is available here.