The Department of International Health

Solutions for improving
health care cooperation
in border regions

WP 4: Making effective use of the Structural Fund Interreg

WP leader: Gesundheitsmanagement Burger-Wieland (GM)

To support people being involved in programme and project activities in border regions (e.g. policy makers, programme and project managers, evaluators, etc.), a handbook will be written. Possible topics of the Handbook “Making effective use of the structural fund INTERREG” are:

 

  • information about the Structural Fund INTERREG and respective regulations;
  • analysis of models of good practice as well as projects that failed;
  • opportunities and challenges of cross-border cooperation;
  • anticipating opportunities and challenges of cross-border co-operation(funding/reimbursement, language and other cultural differences, legal and contractual regulations, quality assurance, problems to realise sustainability, evaluation, recruitment and retaining of staff etc.);
  • barriers of funding-programmes within Europe (transferability of projects, time and effort to apply for a project, no external evaluation of the submitted projects, lacking content-related evaluation of projects, etc.);
  • indicators and criteria for cross-border health care projects to be effective;
  • developing project ideas on a profound basis;
  • organising a project group;
  • designing successful cross-border project proposals;
  • evaluating and selecting project proposals;
  • supporting the implementation and realisation of project.

WP 4 aims to contribute to mutual learning. Not only less experienced health and healthcare stakeholders can learn from good practices and failures across Europe.

 

 

Very active regions provide a starting point to identify criteria and indicators for the effective use of INTERREG-funds. But to give recommendations to regions with less experience, differences between regions (also authority, capacities etc.) and different information and support needs have to be taken into account.

Some assessments of information and suppurt needs have been already done, for example by the project EUREGIO. But they have to be checked for changes over time.

For these reasons, the needs for support, information and tools will be assessed by a screening of available materials, a questionnaire and in-depth interviews.

The Eropean Hospital and Healthcare Organisation (Hope) and the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR) will support the dissemination of the questionnaire, the selection of regional stakeholders and for the test of draft versions and the final version of the handbook.

 

The draft versions and the final version of the handbook will be developed and evaluated in cooperation with the EUREGIO II project group and selected regional key-stakeholders (e.g. Committee of Regions, Ireland (CAWT), Spain-France (Cerdanya), Spain-Portugal, Greece, Italy-Austria-Slovenia, Germany-Poland, etc.) to make sure that the content is in line with experienced challenges and solutions across Europe.

 

It is planned to deliver and test a draft version of the Handbook until the end of 2010. The final version will be provided in the end of 2011.

Please contact the WP leader for comments, recommendations and questions about the Handbook:

Gesundheitsmanagement Burger-Wieland (GM) (Renate Burger)

 

 

Funded by the European Union

 

The project “Solutions for improving health care cooperation in border regions” (EUREGIO II) is carried out by a working group under the co-ordination of the Department for International Health at Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.

The webpage arises from the project which has received funding from the European Union, in the framework of the Public Health Programme (Grant Agreement No 20077118, duration period: 1.12.2008 – 30.11.2011)