Stroke Action Plan Europe: first steps towards implementation

Committee Members

In Photo L-R: Luzia Balmer, Urs Fischer, Diana Aguiar de Sousa, Jelena Misita, Valeria Caso – Advisor, Martin Dichgans, Bo Norrving – Advisor, Hanne Christensen, Cristina Tiu, Robert Mikulik, Markus Wagner, Francesca Romana Pezzella, Grethe Lunde, Bart van der Worp (not pictured)

One year after the publication of the Stroke Action Plan for Europe the Steering Committee Implementation, consisting of ESO and SAFE members, met for the first time at the end of August to discuss KPIs for each of the seven domains of the Action Plan, strategy framework and dissemination.

The central role of both national professional stroke societies and stroke support and patients organization in the realization of the project was evident as well as the importance of registers to drive actions at multiple level in order to achieve the stroke action plan goals and targets by 2030.

There are wide inequalities in access to care and in the offer of the type of treatment for stroke patients in Europe, the Action Plan aims not only to improve the treatment and containment strategies of the disease but also to make it more easily accessible through evidence based policies throughout the whole European Region.

This necessitates a careful mapping of national, regional and local realities against the action plan seven domain KPIs and close collaboration with all national stake holders, such as governmental bodies, active national stroke societies, European agencies, and all current initiatives in the field of improving stroke care such as the recently established IRENE- Implementation Research Network in Stroke Care Quality; the valuable work carried out by the individual ESO committees will also contribute to the implementation of this project.

Contacts with interlocutors such as EAN, WSO, WHO, national societies, with which to build synergies have already been started or will soon be.

In terms of dissemination the need to effectively communicate outside the activities that take place for the implementation of the action plan is crucial to its success, the scientific community and the public in general will be informed by various means, social networks, press releases, and certainly, from now on, it will be our care to inform constantly also through the ESO newsletter.

It is our intention to make the realization of this project as participatory as possible, this is certainly a key element of success and to be able to reach the goals set for ten years from now.