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.

While migration itself is under normal circumstances not a risk for health, conditions surrounding the migration process, particularly the inequalities in access to health services and in social determinants of health, can increase
vulnerability for ill-health. Moreover, migrants are at risk of not receiving the same level of healthcare in the diagnosis, treatment and preventive services that the average population receives in host communities. Healthcare services are not responsive enough to the specific needs of these groups. Building upon recent
European initiatives addressing health and migration, the AMAC project aims to consolidate the results and promote multi-stakeholder engagement in the dialogue on health inequalities linked to migration.

The project will begin with a review of the policy environment in view of the migration health-related conferences and consultations of 2007 and in relation to ongoing European-level projects in migration health. Based on this review, the expert team will identify priority areas as the topics of three individual workshops and develop a plan to establish synergies between their respective ongoing projects. Team members will prepare background papers on key issues linked to the chosen priorities, which will be discussed at the workshops, along with identified best practices and policy recommendations. The workshop results will be presented at a final EU-level consultation with key stakeholders in the fields of health, social affairs and justice/interior with a view to developing action points for integrating the recommendations into related national and EU strategies.

The project will provide governments and the European Commission with guidance on how to best address existing inequalities in access to, as well as the quality and appropriateness of, health services and on how to positively influence the social determinants of the health of migrants.