EFA’s 2015 Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Network Meeting took place on the 18th-19th of May in Malaga. The event was co-hosted by EFA member FENAER (Spanish Federation of Respiratory Diseases Associations).
2015 EFA Annual General Meeting
Held on Monday the 18th, EFA’s AGM accepted two new members to the European family of allergy, asthma and COPD patients: Food Allergy Italia and UK’s Action Against Allergy. We are now proudly representing 40 national associations in 24 European countries.
A complete new EFA Board was also elected. EFA Vice-President Christine Rolland from Association Asthme et Allergies in France became our new President while Erna Botjes from the Netherlands’ Stichting Voedselallergie was elected as the new Vice-President. The remaining three Board members elected were: Dan Murphy from Asthma UK, Mikaela Odemyr from Swedish Astma och Allergi Förbundet and Sharon Cosgrove from Asthma Society of Ireland, who became the new EFA Treasurer.
The AGM also examined and approved EFA annual report and 2014 accounts, as well as the EFA Strategy 2015-2020 work plan and budget for 2015.
2015 EFA Network Meeting
On the 19th, EFA Members had the possibility to present their activities with an exhibition and to share best practices thanks to interactive networking and sharing sessions. They heard more about EARIP, an EU-funded research project lead by Asthma UK, and about mobile health (mHealth) applications for patients with asthma, allergy and COPD through a summary of the myAirCoach project. In the afternoon, EFA Working Groups on COPD, Food Allergy and Asthma and Allergy met to discuss future priorities for 2015 and update about existing EFA activities and projects. Two new Working Groups were also launched: one on Patient Education and the other one on Environmental Determinants.
We warmly welcome our new two EFA Members and the new EFA Board and the AGM thank sincerely and whole heartedly Breda Flood, our previous president and leader, Per-Ake Wecksell, previous Secretary of the Board and Treasurer Ondrej Rybnicek whose terms in the board came to an end. They have helped EFA to grow and flourish. THANK YOU!
Thanks once again FENAER for hosting and organising this event.