On the 13th of June, EFA President Mikaela Odemyr co-moderated a debate at a high-level policy meeting on the challenges and opportunities the European Union has to address allergy and asthma. This meeting was organised during the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) Annual Congress in Vienna from the 11-15 June and served to discuss prevention, care and research policies in allergy and asthma.
Following the success of a similar high-level meeting at EAACI 2015 Congress in Barcelona, the 2016 edition of the lunch was focused on ‘‘Working together to progress EU policies for the benefit of allergic patients in Europe”. Participants in the meeting were coming from the European Commission, the European Parliament, patients, healthcare professionals and industry. This sort of open meeting enable joint reflections on how to strengthen collaboration between policy, research and care and how to make these partnerships work for patients.
During the meeting and to put things in perspective, EFA President Mikaela Odemyr shared her story as a mother of children with severe asthma and allergy. This is why she can see the direct link between policies and living your family life with severe disease and juggling with the access to right care, patient information and little by little gaining the confidence to manage risk to life-threatening reactions in daily life. She also stressed importance of what patient organizations can do and the role of our members, and working together to achieve goals for our members/patients. EFA presents our congratulations to EAACI for their 60 year anniversary and looks forward to continuing and strengthening our partnership!
During Congress, EFA presented our latest HEY YA! Report on young patients with Asthma in Europe, a piece of research where young asthma patients are asked for the first time about how they cope with their disease and how they follow asthma medication. Our results on adherence of young patients with asthma was discussed in the poster presentation by EFA Corporate Relations and Project Manager Antje Fink-Wagner.
For more information about EFA Asthma in young patients project, please visit our dedicated website.