16 Oct European global health researchers publishes opinion piece about Horizon Europe

AIGHD’s Dr. Remko van Leeuwen, Prof. Frank Cobelens and Prof. Constance Schultz have recently co-authored an opinion piece published in the British Medical Journal. The article, Where is the ‘global’ in the European Union’s Health Research and Innovation Agenda? is the result of a collaboration between European global health researchers under the umbrella of the European Global Health Research Institute Network (EGHRIN).

“This publication is particularly important because it is a collective voice from 12 different European research institutes in global health. We jointly argue that the European Union should allocate more funding towards global health, because global health concerns us all. Infectious diseases easily spread to Europe through travel and migration, as the temperature rises, we might also be subject to tropical diseases in the future, and antimicrobial resistance is a big problem in parts of Europe. It is easy to underestimate the importance of global health research,” said Dr. Leeuwen.

Horizon Europe is the European Commission’s €100 billion research and innovation program that will succeed Horizon 2020. The program will run from 2021 to 2027, if Brexit does not delay the budget process. The authors of the article state that:

“The overall visibility of Global Health and the participation of low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) have declined at EU level in recent years, and Horizon Europe barely mentions Global Health and LMICs.”

For this reason, AIGHD’s researchers have joined forces with the other partners of EGHRIN to advocate for a more ambitious European commitment to global health.

Read the full article in the British Medical Journal here.