Moving towards a cross-border cooperation in public health: local evidence and experiences

The WHO European Programme of Work (2020–2025) emphasizes the importance of “supporting local living environments that enable health and well-being”, and identifies the WHO Regions for Health Network as an instrument to achieve this goal. One of the key issues the Network has been working on in recent years, has been the cross-border cooperation amongst regions and countries, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shown that health threats do not stop at national borders. Different responses amongst cross-border regions, based on national policies in terms of Public Health and Social Measures (PHSM), may even weaken their effectiveness. The importance of cooperation across border is not only relevant in the framework of pandemic preparedness and responses, but in many other fields: healthcare cooperation, emergency medical care, medico-social cooperation and increasingly, for health prevention and promotion. All have shown to be beneficial to population health when developed at the subnational level across border regions. Consequently, the aim of this workshop is to adopt a broader perspective to cross-border cooperation, which should move beyond the ‘traditional’ healthcare perspective, to involve a wider spectrum of actors: public health authorities, local authorities, and academic institutions. There is a need to jointly build a new and common understanding on these issues, for a truly pan-European outlook that uses an equity lens to address the challenges of health and wellbeing promotion in border regions. The Keynote speech will be given by the Coordinator of the WHO Europe Regions for Health Network, Dr. Bettina Menne. Subsequently, 3–4 well-established health experts and networks for cross-border cooperation will take the floor with short presentations (5 min) in order to present their ‘business case’ and value. The presentations will be followed by a short round table discussion to highlight the role and strengths health networks can bring to regions in order to improve crossborder cooperation in public health.