Now almost on time we wish you a happy new year. We hope that like us you entered healthily into the year 2010.

2009 started with a gloomy outlook against the background of the developing financial crisis. Many of you joined us in discussing this issue at the 12th European Health Forum Gastein in October and in the Austrian Parliament in November 2009. As it seems stimulus packages across Europe may have succeeded in preventing many potentially negative economic consequences of the crisis. However as unemployment rates in some countries are still on the raise it’s no time to be complacent.

But we also identified additional tasks in our challenge to improve our function as a platform for discussion for the various stakeholders in the field of public health and health care. Some of this includes invigorating some existing ideas such as the re-launch of this blog as well as increasing cooperation with member state parliaments and of course the newly elected European Parliament and the incoming Commission.

Now sadly this will not leave much time for skiing, particularly when looking at lots of fresh snow outside the office. But I’m sure that these additional tasks will be very exciting and will also help to improve the reach and quality of our work in 2010. So make sure you continue to monitor our website and blog to get an impression of the developing activities and the programme of EHFG 2010.

Best wishes

Matthias Schuppe
Secretary General

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