OPENING PLENARY

Visions of a better future for Europe

Wednesday, 4 October 2017 | 12.00-14.00 | Kursaal A

Organised by European Health Forum Gastein

While efforts to foster inter-sectoral cooperation on health have been successful at times, real challenges remain. The discussions at the 20th European Health Forum Gastein will aim to dig deeper, taking the technocratic concept of Health in All Policies to the political level of policy implementation – Health in All Politics.

Against a background of increasing populism and a post-truth era across Europe and beyond, the challenge to the EHFG on its twentieth anniversary is to build bridges between the different policy areas, guided by the European values of universality, access to good quality care, equity and solidarity.

Our plenary sessions this year will thus look at the politics of health in the EU and its Member States, considering the past, sounding out the present, and testing the future.

In this session, we will briefly reflect on the past 20 years of the EHFG, while allocating more time to a forward-look of the important future work needed to realise our motto of “Creating a better future for health in Europe”, from the perspective of members of our Young Forum Gastein Network and through the outcomes of a recent EHFG project on visualising Health Futures.

We will then invite politicians and policy-makers representing the Presidency Trio of the Council of the European Union as well as inter-governmental organisations and the European institutions, to discuss the past, current and forthcoming health priorities of the presidency programme and the conference theme of “Health in All Politics”.

P1 Programme PDF

European Health Award Ceremony 2017

We honour initiatives aiming to improve public health or healthcare in Europe. The award was established to promote cross-border cooperation and the development of sustainable & innovative initiatives that address current challenges.
The winner of the EHA 2017 will be announced during the Opening Plenary.

Learn more

Speakers & panellists

Welcome address & opening

CLEMENS MARTIN AUER, President, European Health Forum Gastein

Health Futures Scenarios

DORLI KAHR-GOTTLIEB, Secretary General, European Health Forum Gastein

Video message

ALOIS STÖGER, Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection, Austria

Inputs from & panel discussion with

PAMELA RENDI WAGNER, Minister of Health & Women's Affairs, Austria

MARTIN SEYCHELL, Deputy Director General, DG SANTE, European Commission

FRANCESCA COLOMBO, Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, OECD

AIN AAVIKSOO, Secretary General for E-services & Innovation, Ministry of Social Affairs, Estonia

Moderation

TANIA DUSSEY-CAVASSINI, former Ambassador for Global Health and former Vice-Director General of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, Federal Department of Home Affairs of Switzerland

Newsroom team

WILLY PALM, Senior Adviser, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies

DIMITRA PANTELI, Department of Health Care Management, Berlin University of Technology, WHO Collaborating Centre for Health Systems Research and Management and member of the Young Forum Gastein