The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986) described health as being:
‘…created and lived by people within the settings of their everyday life; where they learn, work, play and love. Health is created by caring for oneself and others, by being able to take decisions and have control over one’s life circumstances, and by ensuring that the society one lives in creates conditions that allow the attainment of health by all its members.’
With this vision of health in mind, EHMA considers that health management is practised from an individual to a population level, and embraces a holistic vision of health, in which health is impacted by personal, situational, societal, and environmental determinants. Health management includes and goes beyond healthcare management, as it also happens outside of care facilities. Health management encompasses the entire health ecosystem, including patient organisations, health services management representatives, policymakers, public health experts, researchers, and representatives from the health insurance sector, social services, and pharmaceutical industries.
Thus, the EHMA 2022 conference is structured around four tracks that reflect that holistic practice of health management and frame the lenses through which contemporary topics will be analysed and discussed at the conference. The tracks are:
- Governance and Leadership – This track includes abstracts that are creating evidence and best practices on setting and overseeing strategic goals, as well leading successful health organisations and systems.
- Management, Operations and Practice – This track focuses on the operations of organisations and systems. It pays attention to evidence in the planning, organising, staffing, monitoring, directing, and decision-making processes of health services and systems to ensure the effective, efficient, and equitable use of resources.
- Finance and Economics – This track examines business planning and refers to how resources are raised, pooled, allocated or spent to ensure that people have access to health services of good quality without financial hardship. This includes abstracts related to efficiency, effectiveness, value and behaviours in the production and consumption of health and healthcare.
- Policy and Regulations – This track focuses on the development, planning, implementation, and evaluation of policies/regulations affecting health management at the organisational, local, regional, national, and European levels.
These tracks will allow conference attendees to fully explore the different aspects within this year’s conference topics and were identified following an extensive consultation process with the EHMA members, the Scientific Advisory Committee, and the Board of Directors.
Have you carried out research that would be relevant to one (or more) of these tracks? Would you be interested in sharing your results with the health management community? Then don’t forget to submit your abstract before Friday, 4 March at 17:00 CET. You will find all the relevant information here.