ROME (ITALPRESS) – Reducing inequalities to ensure equitable and timely access to healthcare services; promoting prevention to improve the health and well-being of citizens; training and empowering healthcare professionals; and strengthening new models of public-private partnerships to improve the efficiency and quality of healthcare. These are the strategic objectives at the heart of the Action Paper “Partners for the Future,” the collaborative platform created in 2023 at the initiative of Novartis, which involved, starting by listening to the younger generation, multiple actors in the health system to work together to identify concrete lines of action, with a view to the evolution of the National Health Service (NHS).An innovative model of collaboration between the scientific community, patients and industry, which was applauded by the institutions at the meeting hosted at the Chamber of Deputies and organized on the initiative of MP Annarita Patriarca, Component of the XII Social Affairs Commission of the Chamber, who comments, “We must work to ensure a fair, sustainable and competitive healthcare system. I strongly believe that this holds a fundamental priority for our country. Cooperation between all actors, public and private, in the sector is indispensable to ensure uniform and quality access to health services, with particular attention to prevention, diagnostics, and the training of new generations of health professionals. Only through concrete actions will we be able to reduce inequalities and promote the excellence of our system, to the benefit of all citizens. “Among the proposals put forward in the document is the introduction of effective updating by the government on an annual basis of the LEAs, in order to be able to ensure greater compliance in their application throughout the country, and the transmission to Parliament of a report on the inclusion of new LEAs and the overall implementation of their annual update by October 15 each year is hypothesized. The document also calls for criteria related to activities such as prevention to weigh more heavily in the evaluation of the General Directors of ASLs and Hospitals. For this reason, it stresses the need to also review process (e.g., application of population health management processes with use of data) and performance (e.g., adherence to screening) indicators. The definition of these proposals involved a plurality of voices, including Mattia Altini, President Italian Society of Leadership and Management in Medicine (SIMM), Barbara Mangiacavalli, President National Federation of Nursing Profession Orders (FNOPI), Gaetano Piccinocchi, National Treasurer Italian Society of General Practitioners and Primary Care Physicians (SIMG) and Roberta Siliquini, President Italian Society of Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Public Health (S.I.t.I.), who comment in a joint statement, “Equity, sustainability and competitiveness are three pivotal goals for the future of our health service and represent a necessary ground for cooperation. The country’s health and sociodemographic challenges confront us with the need to act in a choral way, to establish the necessary conditions so that citizens’ right to health can be protected and guaranteed. In this sense, the actions proposed in the document presented today in the institutional setting outline perspectives for action in priority areas, and we hope that these proposals will be accepted and that they can contribute to concrete steps forward to innovate access to health care: an opportunity that we must seize for national welfare and to consolidate the excellence of our health service in the world.”The younger generation was the starting point of the “Partners for the Future” platform, with 6 working tables involving more than 40 “under 35” and followed up with the “Youth and Healthcare: the Future We Want” survey of more than 1,000 citizens. One of the issues highlighted as a priority by young people is precisely that of collaboration for the future of healthcare, an approach that calls for a choral commitment of public and private actors. This perspective also sees in the foreground the role of Novartis as Valentino Confalone, Country President of Novartis Italy, comments: “In Novartis we are committed to the frontier of medical-scientific innovation and we believe in the importance of acting as a partner of the health system to put our expertise at the service of the evolution of healthcare. For this reason, as a company we strongly wanted the birth of the “Partners for the Future” platform and we hope that this joint work can contribute to ensuring equity and timely access to innovation, supporting the competitiveness and attractiveness of the Italian NHS.”The “Partners for the Future” project is the backdrop to Novartis “s commitment to the country, which is embodied in investments of 350 million euros over the three-year period 2023-2025, aimed at therapeutic innovation in R&D – with more than 60 million euros each year and 240 clinical trials in 2023 – and the strengthening of its production sites in Italy. This commitment on innovation goes even before and beyond the drug and has taken the form of defining strategic partnerships with national and regional institutions, aiming on the one hand to foster the emergence of innovative access models, which allow Italian patients to benefit from scientific advances in a timely and equitable manner, and on the other hand to support the evolution of the National Health System.The voice of the younger generation, therefore, becomes the driving force behind an innovative model of collaboration to foster change. Francesco Marchionni, Presidential Advisor and Deputy Delegate for Health, Wellness and Civil Service, National Youth Council (NPC) comments, “Young people are the undisputed protagonists of the future and bring with them a great potential for innovation. Therefore, it is important to foster their active role in the country’s major changes, on which the realization of fundamental rights such as the right to health depends. In this sense, the National Youth Council has from the beginning supported the willingness of the “Partners for the Future” platform to listen to young people and foreground their vision on the healthcare of the future.”
– Photo Esperia Advocacy –
(ITALPRESS).
