Associations of healthcare professionals have established a Coalition for Vaccination to commit to delivering accurate information to the public, combating myths and exchanging best practices. The Coalition is based on the 2018 EU Council Recommendation on strengthened cooperation against vaccine-preventable diseases (accessible here).
Healthcare professionals play a crucial role in delivering facts based on scientific evidence and increase public awareness about the benefits of immunisation.
The members of the Coalition have met in Brussels in Brussels for the second time (the first meeting took place on March 2019, as said here) to discuss present and future commitments of the Coalition as well as the upcoming media campaign that the EFN and the other Coalition co-chairs will do in April 2020, in parallel to the European Immunization Week (EIW).
The European Joint Action on Vaccination (EU-JAV) attended the meeting as well, to present their work on the training of health professionals. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) talked about their ongoing work on vaccination, linked to healthcare professionals. UNICEF presented their training package for health professionals. Finally, the European Commission (EC, DG Sante) explained their ongoing work disseminating benefits of vaccination and combating the myths, misconceptions and scepticism on vaccination.
During the meeting, the EFN took the opportunity to remind all health stakeholders present, some from the European Commission (EC) that Electronic Health Records are powerful tools that could be used for combating vaccination hesitancy and for fostering vaccination uptake. If patients have, for example, their whole vaccination history accessible at their finger trips via an Electronic Health Records, it would be easier for them to track which vaccines do they still need and get them at any healthcare facility. For that reason, the EFN has joined with the mission to provide nursing end-user engagement the two EU-funded projects InteropEHRate and Smart4Health.
The Coalition is co-chaired by the European Federation of Nurses Associations (EFN), the Standing Committee of European Doctors (CPME), and the Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union (PGEU). It is also backed up by the European Commission which provides coordination and administrative support.