Workshop: Developing interventions to improve migrants’ healthcare access in Europe
Authors:   Organised by: MyHealth Project Chair persons: Núria Serre-Delcor - Spain, Stella Evangelidou - Spain
Published: November 2019

The proposed workshop “Developing interventions to improve migrants’ healthcare access in Europe” will present interim results from the cross-disciplinary MyHealth project to discuss them and the early lessons with policymakers, academics, funders and practitioners in the area of migration and health.

MyHealth (Models to engage migrants and refugees in their health, through community empowerment and learning alliance) is a three-year project coordinated by Fundació Hospital de la Vall d’Hebrón, Institut de Recerca (VHIR), Barcelona, Spain and implemented by a consortium of eleven partners with the CHAFEA support in the framework of the 3rd EU Health Program. The goal of the MyHealth project is to improve the healthcare access of vulnerable migrants and refugees (VMR) newly arrived to Europe, by developing and implementing models based on the knowhow of a European multidisciplinary network. This project strongly relies on a participatory approach to ensure a beneficiary-centred approach in implementing a number of interconnected objectives. To ensure a meaningful involvement of the community we applied the Metaplan technique to identify health concerns and needs perceived by vulnerable immigrants and also by professionals from diverse backgrounds working with them at the four partnering sites (Barcelona, Berlin, Brno and Athens). The Metaplan© is a qualitative technique that involves first collecting ideas or information on cards, grouping the cards according to shared characteristics, and ultimately, using a voting system to rank individual ideas or groups of ideas. The research team used this methodology to validate the health needs of immigrants identified by the MyHealth needs assessment methodology and prioritize them, and to generate, categorize and prioritize suggested solutions. These results will be analysed to identify community health strategies and to implement pilot interventions most relevant for the cultural and social reality at each of the sites. Further, the effectiveness of these interventions as a dissemination model will be evaluated. As an innovative approach, the project uses a Learning Alliance methodology to engage multiple stakeholders in the research process through a series of interconnected networks. Each of the he partners aim to document and reflect on best practices for the improvement of the migrants’ access to healthcare and thus provides an opportunity for mutual learning for the consortium members and their respective networks. The workshop will feature presentations by MyHealth partners that will be followed by the moderated Q&A session with the panel of presenters. The workshop participants feedback will be additionally sought through a self-administered workshop evaluation questionnaire. The workshop will facilitate the information exchange and discussion between the MyHealth consortium partners and other ongoing initiatives to improve migrants’ healthcare in European countries.

Key messages

The community engagement in the development of interventions to facilitate the access to health services while ensuring quality care to migrants community is pivotal in health promotion initiatives. In spite of the notable variability across the sites, the ubiquitous barriers were associated with both host and migrant communities, for which the future interventions would need to account.