AHEAD webinar on medical deserts

On September 16th, Wemos and our partners in the project Action for Health and Equity: Addressing medical Deserts (AHEAD) organised a webinar about the different manifestations of medical deserts in Italy, Moldova, the Netherlands, Romania and Serbia. The recording of our webinar is now available on our YouTube channel.

We shared the key findings of our country research on medical deserts in Italy, Moldova, the Netherlands, Romania and Serbia with the audience. For example, we found several common ‘root causes’ of medical desertification in the abovementioned countries: increased health care need among the population and a low number of health workers. In addition, we also found common ’themes’, based on the interviews we held with stakeholders in the said countries: low familiarity with the term ‘medical deserts’, and insufficient mitigation, solutions and strategies on the national and local level (i.e. no clear ownership of the problem or solution).

It was an interactive webinar, during which there was room for questions from the audience. Stefan Mandic-Rajcevic, data research analyst at the University of Belgrade and one of our AHEAD team members in Serbia, was our moderator. Our speakers were:

• Key note speech (by Katarzyna Ptak Bufkens – Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety, European Commission)
• Medical deserts: definition and methodology (by Dana Farcasanu –Center for Health Policies and Services)
• Country findings: Italy, Moldova, Serbia, Romania, the Netherlands (by Aysel Rahimli – Wemos)

Medical deserts are areas with a low concentration of health services that result in unmet medical needs and increasing health inequalities. With the AHEAD project, we aim to reduce health inequalities by addressing the challenge of medical deserts and medical desertification in Europe. The team behind the project consists of the Center for Health Policies and Services (Romania), Cittadinanza Attiva (Italy), Media Education Centre (Serbia), National School for Public Health Management (Moldova), Wemos (lead partner organisation – Netherlands), and VU Athena (Netherlands).

Visit the AHEAD website for more information.