EU4Health

EU4Health 2021-2027 is a vision for a healthier European Union. It's the EU’s response to COVID-19 and the pandemic's impact on patients, medical and healthcare staff, and health systems in Europe. The new EU4Health programme will go beyond crisis response to address healthcare systems’ resilience.

ECHAMP believes that an integrative approach, combining the best options from both conventional and complementary medicine, would greatly contribute to the financial sustainability of healthcare systems. Complementary medicines have an important role to play in self-management of minor health conditions and in the treatment of chronic disease. We encourage the European Commission to acknowledge, endorse and encourage the conscious integration of pluralism into EU healthcare, to enable Member States to openly explore how to harness the full potential of complementary medicine, and further integrate those therapies into their healthcare systems.

There is a need to fund collaborative research and development to bridge the knowledge gap and to allow access to EU funding for cross-sectoral research, which includes the field of complementary and traditional medicine, and to leverage the full potential of this approach in both human and veterinary medicine. A multi-sectoral approach is the way forward to increase the basic health of every EU citizen and to protect the environment.