Background
To identify ways to address the negative effects of excessive health worker migration and recruitment, Wemos (the Netherlands) established the ‘Pillars of Health’ coalition in 2021, by joining forces with the Center for Health Policies and Services (Romania), the Media Education Centre (Serbia), the Association of Democratic Physicians (Verein demokratischer Ärzt*innen (vdää*)) (Germany) and the VU Athena Institute (the Netherlands).
Objectives
Pillars of Health envisions an EU in which all citizens have equal access to skilled, motivated and supported health workers as part of their right to health and as part of the progress towards Universal Health Coverage. Therefore, the alliance aims to do joint advocacy to influence policy makers so they actively implement policies mitigating the negative effects of health worker migration and mobility (e.g. understaffed and overburdened healthcare systems and limited return on investments in sending countries), while contributing to a strong and sustainable health workforce across the EU and neighbouring countries.
Approach
This project applies three strategies to work towards the project objectives: evidence-building, coalition-building and advocacy:
Evidence-building activities focus on increasing our understanding of shortages of health workforce across the European region in relation to mobility of health workers. In addition, activities aim to uncover causes and impacts of health worker migration, recognising the diversity among the health workforce in terms of gender, age and specialty (among other dimensions). In the context of this project, research is conducted in different contexts (i.e. Serbia, Romania, Germany and EU level) by diverse knowledge institutes to inform policy-making and advocacy. Research is translated to accessible reports and tools to convey to various audiences (e.g. researchers, civil society, policy makers) to inform advocacy.
Coalition-building includes the mobilisation of stakeholders involved in health workforce mobility across the EU and neighbouring countries
Advocacy refers to the work by the Pillars of Health alliance to put health worker mobility on the political and policy agenda as well as to provide information and advice to key stakeholders working on health workforce issues in Europe.
Athena’s role
The Athena Institute provides support in evidence-building, capacity-building and knowledge translation to inform advocacy on health workforce mobility in Europe. Specifically, the Athena Institute works towards the integration of gender in evidence-building and capacity-building activities. By doing so, the Athena Institute aims to raise awareness on gender issues that contribute to inequity in the health workforce, cross-border collaboration and in health workforce policies and programs, particularly related to migration.
