Session 24

The implementation gap

Why good health and care initiatives get stuck – and what we can do about it

Organised by the Transforming Health and Care Systems Partnership (THCS), EuroHealthNet, AAL Programme, and Stichting Health ClusterNET

Across Europe, a familiar pattern repeats: a promising initiative launches, demonstrates impact, stakeholders align — then funding ends, the team disperses, and the model disappears. Not because it failed, but because no pathway existed to take it further: governance was unclear, financing didn't fit, and implementation conditions weren't there. Nowhere is this starker than in health promotion and disease prevention, where what works is established but rarely funded to last.

Why? Because health and care systems are built to treat illness, and put less focus, for example, on the technological and organisational innovations that keep people, and the health and care workforce, well over time. As climate risks, conflict, ageing populations and widening inequities converge, Europe must innovate and transform faster.

This session brings institutional, financing and implementation perspectives — including novel financing models and ecosystem examples — to discuss what it would take: where governance and financing need to shift and what "ecosystem thinking" looks like in practice.

Further speakers to be announced