Project name: Action for Health and Equity: Addressing medical Deserts project (AHEAD)
Project period: April 2021 – May 2023
Project partners: Center for Health Policies and Services (Romania), Cittadinanzattiva (Italy), Media Education Centre (Serbia), National School of Public Health Management (Moldova), VU Athena Institute (Netherlands) and Wemos (lead organization).
With the AHEAD project, we contributed to policymakers’ understanding of medical deserts in Europe. They increasingly acknowledge the urgency to address Europe’s health workforce crisis.
We all want to receive the healthcare we need, whenever and wherever we need it. However, so-called medical deserts are increasingly hindering this. These are areas where access to healthcare services is limited, for example due to a lack of health workers or a misalignment between the population’s health needs and the available services. Medical deserts are a growing problem in Europe, hampering many European citizens to receive the healthcare they need. They can exacerbate health inequalities, affecting vulnerable groups such as the elderly.
Firstly, EU member states must recognize that medical deserts form an urgent public health issue and gain a better understanding of how and why certain areas become medical deserts. Secondly, they should implement stronger health workforce policies to improve training, working conditions, recruitment and retention of health workers – at national as well as EU level. For example, member states can improve the working and living conditions for health workers in rural areas, and increase cooperation between general-practitioners and other healthcare providers.
Overall, stronger, collective EU action is essential. The EU should take collective responsibility for the commonly felt health workforce crisis across its member states. By developing and implementing an ambitious, overarching plan, using available policy instruments and funding, member states can counter medical deserts.
We helped policymakers better understand medical deserts across Europe. For example, we made a tool that visualizes medical deserts to show policymakers the extent of the problem. We also held participatory consensus building workshops with local and national stakeholders in Italy, Moldova, the Netherlands, Romania, and Serbia to gather possible policy solutions and create support for these. Finally, to elevate the topic of medical deserts on the agenda at EU level, we organized a policy dialogue in the European Parliament. We brought together people who experience medical desertification first-hand and policymakers and urged different actors to work together in multi-sectoral collaboration.
We garnered a lot of attention for medical deserts and kickstarted discussions about how to tackle them. Our work contributed to policymakers’ understanding of medical deserts in Europe. They increasingly acknowledge the urgency to address Europe’s health workforce crisis – not just the health workforce shortages, but also their unequal availability. We will continue engaging with EU stakeholders, emphasizing the need for continued monitoring and evaluation of how member states implement our recommendations to ultimately achieve effective policy change.
Read a more detailed version of our impact story on this page.
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