6.H. Workshop: Migration Health Country Assessment: Self-assessment tool developed by JAHEE WP7 Use and application
Authors:   Organised by: Norwegian Institute of Public Health,   Chair persons: Bernadette Kumar (EUPHA-MIG)
Published: October 2021

Migration Health research has seen a recent surge of publications, but these are not evenly distributed across topics or countries. This is also seen in data on COVID19 and migrants in the past year. The Lancet Commission on Migration and Health (2018) calls for a paradigm shift in research and data available on migration and health. The COVID 19 pandemic has taught us that the availability of data or lack thereof has serious implications for policy and practise. Individual researchers often repeat small studies, fail to study important areas or identify gaps in particular related to policy and practise. There is a need to have a tool to identify the gaps in research, policy and practise at the country level. One such tool that has existed is MIPEX but it is dependent on external funding and collaboration between national and international researchers. The Joint Action on Health Equity Europe (JAHEE) aims to address inequities in health across all groups. Work Package 7 Migration and Health (WP7), includes 10 partner countries, focussing on equitable health for the migrant population. The project commenced with the development of a Policy framework for Action (PFA) forming the basis for exploring opportunities for appropriate actions in the three- year implementation period of the action. The PFA identified “The Road Map”, a 6-point summary of ‘soft policy' instruments produced by international /governmental organisations since 2007. The PFA also discussed the state of the art in research on the causes of particular ‘black spots', as well as the measures that can be taken to tackle them. The main objective of the JAHEE Country Assessment (CA) was to identify the best opportunities (entry points) for developing country specific actions (doable within the period with available resources). The purpose of the CA is to provide information that could enable each partner to make an informed choice about actions. To make this choice they need to know where the most serious inequities lie, what causes them, and what can be done about them. The Country assessment was developed based on the PFA, discussed and commented by the expert group and piloted in two countries Norway and Italy in March 2019. It was completed by 12 of the partners by end of 2019. It has guided the selection of feasible and complex actions in JAHEE that will be completed by end 2021.

The main objective of this workshop is to share the experiences of the application of the country assessment tool and to review the possibility of using this tool in a larger regional/ global context. By harnessing experiences from the users of the tool and in discussion with potential users (WHO/IOM) we will be able to gather key lessons learnt and application of the tool in the future. We could mutually benefit from opening up channels of communication between potential users that could in turn contribute to the development of good-quality comparable country profiles on migration health.

Key messages

The Country Assessment Tool developed by WP7 JAHEE provides the basis for identifying inequity gaps for migrant health. Experiences from the use of the Country Assessment Tool indicate it could be used as a self- assessment tool but requires wider testing.