The Special Olympics EU Eurasia Foundation (SOEEF) is dedicated to providing critical services to children and adults with intellectual disabilities through ongoing training and competition, physical activities, inclusive sport, social inclusive initiatives and health services in all 28 Member States. The objectives are to offer quality training, competition, health screenings, and ongoing inclusive opportunities to athletes to maximize individual athlete potential, promote health and a healthy lifestyle both in sport and daily life, whilst reducing health inequalities and improving access to quality health services for people with intellectual disabilities.
In summary we can point out that people with intellectual disabilities have a wide range of chronic and acute health issues and conditions. In many instances, more frequent and severe symptoms than the general population; are twice as likely to have significant visual problems and at much younger age; are hardly ever engaged in vigorous physical activity and find it difficult to make themselves understood when speaking with health professionals; health conditions are may be similar to the general population, the impacts can be greater on those with ID; Experience higher mortality rates as a result of higher rates of cardiovascular diseases. Special Olympics EU Eurasia and its partner national programs provides its service to almost half a million individuals with intellectual disabilities across the EU driven mainly by volunteers.
The Healthy Athletes (HA) program provides access to health care for SO Athletes not only to improve their ability to improve health and fitness levels or to train and compete in SO events, but also to identify health care needs and to improve quality of health care for people with intellectual disabilities. The integrated health and physical activity action plan improves public health and reduces health inequalities of people with intellectual disabilities.
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The European Network to reduce vulnerabilities in health brings together NGOs and academic partners from 23 European countries. Its goal is to contribute to the reduction of EU-wide health inequalities and to improve the response from better equipped health systems so as to deal with vulnerability factors. The Network advocates in favour of better access to healthcare for people facing vulnerabilities through solid quantitative data collection among the partners and advocacy towards European institutions and stakeholders. The members work in different fields of health and social care provision and support a variety of target groups, from the homeless and sex workers to people in poverty and migrants. This creates the potential for rich exchanges on good practices and an opportunity for more effective common advocacy activities across Europe.

2017-last year of a three-year project (2015-2017) - will focus on capitalising on the lessons learned over the three years and enlarging ambitions for future collaboration. This implies designing tools that can be used in the longer run such as a toolkit on best practices and two webinars on data collection and patient empowerment. Dialogue between the members will continue, sharing knowledge about activities and expertise by organizing exchanges between peers and workshops on advocacy and empowerment.

The Network will continue to work on the data collection process in 14 European countries. Medical and social surveys conducted in free clinics receiving people facing vulnerabilities (EU citizens and migrants) enable to identify their health status and social determinants, including obstacles to access to care, in order to inform health policy makers and obtain positive changes. More particularly, the Network’s joint data collection and advocacy on refugees’ health needs will help create a more balanced public discourse within which policy makers can commit to abide by their international obligations towards refugees.

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The strategic objective of the project is to improve the health of migrants and communities affected by migration and, therefore, to tackle existing health gaps. The project’s goal is to enhance the understanding of the complex relationship between health and population mobility.
1) Follow-up and build on recent European initiatives in migration health. In particular, the project will take into consideration the migration health-related conferences and consultations of 2007 and develop synergies with European-level migration health projects currently being implemented.
2) Create a forum for discussions among experts on health and migration. The project seeks to bring together academics, national authorities, representatives of international organizations and NGOs and enable them to exchange their expertise, to discuss concrete cases, identify best practices and draft policy recommendations. The participants will also identify areas in which more data needs to be collected and analysed as well as areas where more research needs to be conducted.
3) Enable EU Member States to learn from each others’ practices and foster dialog among academic institutions, multiple stakeholders in governments, the European Commission, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations. The project seeks to encourage these multidisciplinary stakeholders to develop action points for integrating the project’s recommendations into health and related strategies at the national and EU levels. This widened involvement will support a multi-pronged approach beyond the traditional target audience of health professionals.
4) Disseminate widely the final report of the workshop results and consultation conclusions to key stakeholders for migration health issues.
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The project will promote exchange of expertise, information and good practices on healthcare for migrants and minority populations. The project will act as a catalyst in the formation of scientific and professional communities in each country concerned with migrant and minority health.
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The project contributes to enhancing the European Union population’s health, by improving asylum seekers’ and undocumented migrants’ access to health care. Médecins du Monde (MdM) aims at documenting asylum seekers and undocumented migrants’ access to health care in the EU. MdM also seeks to promote these populations’ right to access health care on equal terms with nationals, and a right to protection against deportation for seriously ill foreigners.
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