Strengthening voluntary cooperation between Member States to improve the health of EU citizens

ended

Strengthening voluntary cooperation between Member States to improve the health of EU citizens Malta will be holding the Presidency of the EU Council between January and June 2017. As part of this Presidency, Malta will be focusing upon voluntary cooperation between member states in two main areas, which are Structured Cooperation between Health Systems as a mechanism to improve access to innovative and highly specialised services, medicines and technologies and halting the rise of childhood obesity. The general objective of this proposal is the convening of two high level technical workshops bringing together experts from Member States to discuss the identified thematic priorities. These discussions will form two outcome reports that may be used as a basis for the elaboration of Council Conclusions. The Maltese EU Presidency in 2017 will explore the scope of voluntary structured cooperation between Member States, to ensure access to innovative medical technologies as well as provision of highly specialised health services. Political focus will be on the needs of small populations. Two specific areas where sustainable models of structured cooperation could be of particular relevance for small populations are health workforce and medical technology. The scope of cooperation in these fields both between individual Member States as well as within the context of the EU will be further explored in two policy briefs being drawn up as part of this initiative. Tackling childhood obesity will be of EU added value across all MS. Malta has prioritised childhood obesity as one of its thematic priority areas. It is planned to take actions in this area by bringing together technical people and experts from member states working in this area at a technical workshop. To this aim two policy briefs will be developed dealing with identifying evidence-based interventions across Europe to tackle childhood obesity and to develop guidelines for the procurement of school meals.