Title: EUropean Refugees-HUman Movement and Advisory Network

The international refugee crisis has reached a critical point and many European countries are developing policy and plan to better define their role in supporting refugees entering Europe. The aim of this proposal is to enhance the capacity of European member states who accept migrants and refugees in addressing their health needs, safeguard them from risks, and minimize cross-border health risks. This initiative will focus on addressing both the early arrival period and longer-term settlement of refugees in European host countries. The existing European and international experience will be systematically reviewed to identify effective interventions to vulnerable groups and tools for the initial health care needs assessment of the arriving refugees including mental, psychosocial and physical health. Established approaches including Participatory and Learning Action and Normalization Process Theory will be used to gain new understanding regarding the needs and opinions of both refugees and stakeholders in regards to the measures needed for health care assessment, and preventive activities including vaccinations, general health hygiene measures, chronic disease management, and psychosocial support. The content of the services that an early or late hosting multi-disciplinary center could offer in the countries that they will accept refugees will be discussed and defined by an international expert panel. Clinical protocols, guidelines together with health education and promotion material and as well as a training programme will be developed for staff serving the refugees and migrants health care centre and tailored protocols and pilot testing in six implementation settings in Greece, Italy, Croatia, Hungary, Austria and Slovenia with contribution from experts and stakeholders from Turkey, Cyprus, Ireland and Belgium. Finally, all these efforts will be evaluated and a final report for implementation in Europe.
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Eight NGOs will support the health authorities of 11 Member States (BE, BG, DE, EL, ES, FR, HR, IT, NO, SE, SI) in providing adequate and accessible health services to newly arrived migrants with a specific focus on children, unaccompanied minors and pregnant women. Where needed, flexible and adaptive mobile health surveillance and response units will identify arrival and transit locations and provide general health assessments. Individual mental and physical health assessments will be conducted using the standardized personal health record developed by IOM and DG SANTE. Migrants will receive a health booklet to facilitate referrals to adequate and accessible primary healthcare (including vaccinations). Psychosocial support and preventative care will also be delivered. Depending on the rapidly changing context, and as long as adequate patient privacy can be ensured, actions will take place in mobile units, in temporary ‘clinics’ or in already existing centres run by the partner organizations or one of their associate local partners. Wherever possible, access to national health systems will be supported through social and health mediation activities and the provision of information on migrants’ rights to access care.

Experiences and lessons learned will be systematically shared with local, national and European health authorities. Core indicators on migrants’ health and main vulnerability factors will be routinely collected and used both to improve field teams’ responses and to inform health authorities. Finally, teams’ capacities will be reinforced through active European coordination and mutual learning mechanisms, including an intermediary workshop.

As a result, geographically changing needs will continuously be assessed and met, cross-border health threats will be reduced, local coordination between all operational actors will be improved and applicants and their teams’ capacities in responding to urgent migrants’ health needs will be strenghtened.
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The general objective of the project is to support EU Member States (MS) under particular migratory pressure in their response to health related challenges. Specific objectives of the project are to support MS’s coordination, assessments, planning of a public health response, fostering access to health care and capacity building efforts through training of health workers. Target countries are Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia (first arrival and transit countries); Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Malta, Sweden, The Netherlands (traditional destination countries); and Portugal, Poland, Spain (new destination countries). The ultimate beneficiaries are registered and unregistered refugees asylum seekers and other migrants, while direct beneficiaries are the health systems of each EU MS and their health workers. The project will contribute to meeting the objectives and priorities of the Annual Work Programme 2015. SH-CAPAC is being submitted by 7 European health institutions, 6 of them have developed the EU-funded MEM-TP project under the same lead institution (EASP, Spain). The partners will function as a collective entity for developing the necessary instruments and tools through a division of labour; carrying out regional advocacy and capacity building activities; conducting site visits to target countries for specific technical assistance; coordination activities with national health authorities and other relevant national stakeholders as well as with relevant international organisations and the EU. The project comprises 6 WP -including different tools and instruments to be developed- which are organized as a set of processes that will be structured as complementary, intertwined and synergistic streams of work, mutually reinforcing each other. They are intended primarily to support MS to strengthen their health systems for addressing the health needs of the refugee, asylum seekers and other migrant populations.
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