Project overview

Meeting the health needs of the increasing groups of immigrants is a major challenge to public health throughout Europe. EUGATE will bring together a multidisciplinary consortium from 16 EU member states to consolidate the currently fragmented knowledge in the field and identify best practice of health care for different immigrant populations. It will review legislation, policies, and funding arrangements, assess systems of health care services, and compare models of best practice across European countries for the people concerned. EUGATE will define guidelines for best practice and disseminate the findings widely among the relevant stakeholder groups in Europe

Objectives

General objectives

The general objectives of the proposed research are:

To improve health and prevent illness of citizens in Member States, especially among immigrants and minorities;
To reduce inequalities in provision of care and referral practices for migrants and minority populations by contributing to mainstreaming health and consumer policies across the EU;
To exchange models of best practice among member states and learn from each other by building a network of experts among the participating EU countries;
To contribute to the enlargement process by fully integrating partners from all member states and create added value on a European level by an integrated approach of academic, governmental, non-profit organisations and international public bodies;
To contribute to the goal of the EC regarding providing quality, relevant and timely data of services for immigrants and minorities;
To contribute to a harmonised European strategy in providing responsive health and social services for immigrants and minorities, disseminating best practices and a toolkit on how to tackle inequalities in access, quality and appropriateness of health and social services for migrants and minorities;
To contribute to the further improvement of services by defining measures of quality and by facilitating a discussion on the issues, leading to policy decisions on both national and European levels
To publish and disseminate best practice examples in a coherent way, for service improvement for immigrants and minorities.

Strategic objectives

To support and inform EU policies and activities on health determinants, particularly social marginalization factors and mental health
To contribute to the formation of a more coherent overall policy vision with a clear evidence base on promoting mental health and preventing mental-ill health among the socially marginalized
To support the development of actions for providing and exchanging good practice across EU Member States in terms of mental health policies, legislation, and services promoting mental and preventing mental illness in socially marginalized groups
To promote cross-cutting and integrated approaches to promoting mental health and preventing mental-ill health across several social marginalization factors
To promote and stimulate countries’ efforts to improve mental health and prevent mental-ill health of socially marginalized people.

Specific objectives

To agree in the working group on a common definition on immigrants that can be put into operation in order to obtain comparable data. This definition will then be proposed for further use in the implementation of ethnic monitoring data in health care institutions in the respective countries and to the EC;
To develop and pilot data collection methods for information not yet available by developing a framework, including a matrix and an assessment tool to assess overall concepts, legislation, policies and funding arrangements, organisation and utilization of services and methods of evaluation and monitoring in these services;
To provide, based on the agreed frame, a comprehensive compendium by describing overall legislation, policies and funding arrangements as national frame for health care provision; organisation and utilization of services, and methods of evaluation and monitoring of these services. The documents will be described specifically for the diverse group of migrants;
To identify and exchange models of best practice and identify barriers and factors inhibiting access to these services;
To conduct a review and identify potential for transferring best practice models from one country to another to contribute to establishing comparable strategies in healthcare assistance;
To develop a compendium of best practice for capacity building containing professional standards and competencies to improve access, quality and appropriateness of health and social services for immigrants and minorities. The systematically developed inventory of best practice of health care for immigrants and minorities will integrate prioritised areas, like equality, and health monitoring.
To create a multilingual, searchable website for disseminating achieved documents and national models of best practice usable in all member states. The non-public part of the website will be used for information exchange of the project partners and for communication with the EC.

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