News

Carina Dantas, from Cáritas Coimbra, was invited by the Campania Reference Site, in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Health program for Internationalization of Regional Health Systems  (PROMIS), to participate as speaker in the International Conference Health tourism: an opportunity for sustainable development, that took place in Naples, on October 15-16th, 2018.

In February 2017, PROMIS presented the first version of the Position Paper on health tourism, which represents a first shared approach to the recommendations expressed by the European Committee of Regions on “Age Friendly” tourism. “Age-friendly” tourism is an example of an innovative tourist offer that strives to meet the health needs of the entire “traveling” population, with an integrated and cross-sector approach that involves various organizations operating in sectors such as health care, accessibility and transport. Also, the Committee of the Regions stresses the importance of local and regional authorities in the coordination of multi-sectoral policies such as transport, healthcare, social assistance, urban planning and rural development in relation to the promotion of mobility, security, accessibility of services, including health care and social services.

During 2018, Cáritas Coimbra and AFEdemy are the Coordinators of SHAFE – a Thematic Network on Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments approved by the European Commission – that involves already 10 major European networks and over 100 partner organisations, bringing inputs, comments and endorsement of expectedly hundreds of stakeholders all around Europe.

The specific aim of SHAFE is to enhance the two main aspects of Age-Friendly Environments – Places and People – in the creation of eHealth and mHealth solutions – especially focused on quality and costs. These smart environments need to align technological development with the building industry in terms of policy and funding, in order to make smart homes available, affordable and large-scaled in Europe. This broad adoption may be the keystone to a more efficient health care system that adds better quality for less investment, in line with the Digital Single Market strategy.

Carina Dantas participated on October 5 in the workshop to explore the ways of SHAFE connection in a systemic action in the field of “healthy” tourism, and to identify priority implementation areas that offer opportunities to take advantage of validated experiences in regional, national and international contexts. In a conversation with Maddalena Illario and Jean Busquet, Caritas and the Age Platform have identified priority implementation areas that offer opportunities to benefit from validated experiences in regional, national and international contexts.

The workshop also provided a description of initiatives to promote age-friendly and healthy tourism, in an effort to stimulate twinning activities between the EIP on AHA Reference Sites, and strengthen the partnerships between RS and AG.

Cáritas Coimbra took advantage of this event to disseminate the DAPAS project, its ambitions in terms of results and experiences for the end users, as well as the sharing of experiences and good practices among the partners present.

The agenda of the workshop is available in Agenda Conference_Health Tourism_Naples 2018