In policymaking, it is important to note that high patient association participation does not necessarily equal high impact. There are a variety of tools available that will help you to achieve your desired outcome. These tools vary in their complexity and rigor. They will help evaluate criteria for achieving impact in particular settings. Amongst the most important are leadership, training & experience.

To achieve your goals, it is important to identify strong partners. In particular, this means the RIGHT partners for achieving your goals.

These can be supporters & influencers. Especially those who add credibility. It’s also important to consider potential ‘adversaries’ and think about how to involve them in your strategy. It is also important to think about how many partners are necessary to achieve your goal.

When thinking about building a coalition, you can either start a new coalition or start a collaboration. Ask yourself, whether it is possible to collaborate on a defined issue with existing groups?

Coalitions can be a powerful tool to achieve broader objectives, have greater credibility, and provide wider perspectives than a single person. Once you have found your partners and established your coalition, encouraging more information sharing will help each member to better understand each other’s unique roles. This in turn is helping to achieve better policy outcomes.

When meeting with stakeholders, underscore that patients are the experts in their beliefs, with their own values and preferences. Ensure that the “physical” dimension of care is not the only factor considered when talking to your stakeholders. Patient associations can ensure patient perspectives are integrated into policy-making and healthcare reforms, but also should ensure patient participation in hospital boards, clinical trial ethics committees, healthcare professional training programs or HTA analysis.

Successful partnerships are those that achieve real impact.

Countries represented at YCE’s Fundamentals of EU Policy Making included Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom.

A special thank you goes out to our sponsors for helping make the event possible.