The Central, Eastern Europe and the Baltics (CEEBA) Health Policy Network
Introduction
The Central, Eastern Europe and Baltics (CEEBA) region is complex and diverse, with differing health systems and variable access to high-quality care and innovative treatment, accompanied by an array of cultural, historical, political and geo-political commonalities. Currently, for the purposes of this initiative, the CEEBA region encompasses the following countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia, while the list remains ever-evolving.
In addition, the region faces shared challenges – in workforce recruitment and retention, health system budget restraints, a growing, ageing population, and an increasing chronic disease burden. With COVID-19 revealing the fragility of health systems across the CEEBA region, health has become an ever-increasing political priority. In addition, new geo-political forces, like the war in Ukraine, are substantially impacting healthcare delivery across the region.
Within this context, the CEEBA Health Policy Network (“CEEBA-HPN”) has been initiated to:
Convene a group of leading regional health policy experts
to identify shared challenges and exchange key learnings from different health systems across CEEBA
Deliver a series of policy roundtables
to co-create policy solutions for application at a national and regional level
Collaborate with partners
from across the public, private and academic sectors to identify and implement high-impact solutions
CEEBA-HPN policy recommendations towards greater sustainability and resilience of healthcare systems through digitalization
Over the course of 2022, the CEEBA-HPN invested concerted efforts into developing policy solutions towards greater sustainability and resilience of healthcare systems in the CEEBA region through digitalization, particularly in the face of external shocks. Through a collaboration between key stakeholders from different sectors, including the public sector, healthcare professionals and patient representatives, multiple high-level dialogues and best practice sharing sessions took place with the aim of strengthening health systems in the region.
Human-centric digitalization of healthcare holds great promise to improve the quality of and increase access to care as well as enhance the efficiency of healthcare systems at large. This was the guiding principle behind the policy recommendations report of the CEEBA-HPN that has been launched at the PHSSR Global Summit on 22 November 2022.
The following members of the CEEBA-HPN Steering Committee contributed to the development of the report:
Co-Chairs
- Dr. Cristian-Silviu Bușoi, Member of the European Parliament, Romania
- Prof. Iwona Kowalska-Bobko, Head of Health Policy and Management Department, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Poland and academic lead of PHSSR in Poland
Special Advisor on Healthcare Digitalization
- Dr. Andrzej Rys, Director, Health Systems and Medical products and Innovation, European Commission
Members
- Prof. Diana Loreta Paun, Presidential Counsellor, Romania
- Dr. Alexander Simidchiev, Member of the Chamber of Deputies, Bulgaria
- Mgr. Petra Adámková, Director, ONKO Unie, Chair, Cancer Patients Voice, Czech Republic
- Dr. Elena Marušáková, Vice-Chair, Association for the Protection of Patients’ Rights of the Slovak Republic, Slovakia
- Radu Costin Ganescu, President, National Coalition of organisations for patients with chronic conditions of Romania, Romania
- Prof. Ramunė Kalėdienė, Dean, Faculty of Public Health, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Lithuania
- Dr. Łukasz Jankowski, President, The Supreme Medical Council, Poland
Independence of the CEEBA-HPN
The CEEBA Health Policy Network complies with the ethics and guiding principles of the PHSSR, underpinned by principles of academic rigour and global good citizenship. The work of the CEEBA-HPN is supported by AstraZeneca, but the experts participate and provide their opinion on a fully independent voluntary basis.
Collaboration between the PHSSR and the CEEBA-HPN
The CEEBA Health Policy Network is able to apply the PHSSR research framework to regional research and/or case studies, with oversight and approval from the London School of Economics on a case-by-case basis.