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Among the contemporary challenges, the ability of cities and territories to transform themselves into inclusive, participatory and resilient contexts, able not only to adapt to changes, but also to cope with them through good planning in the use of resources and directly involving citizens, is becoming increasingly important.
Active Citizenship Network (ACN) is glad to invite you to the 15th European Patients’ Rights Day that will be celebrated with a digital conference on 5th & 6th May 2021 titled “The role of civic society and Patients Advocacy Groups for more resilient Health Care Systems. Lessons learned toward a European Health Union”.
The 2021 conference will focus on showing and discussing examples of citizen’s engagement in health policies in this particular historical moment: a first day, dedicated to the health challenges faced by non-COVID patients and a second day, focused on the resilience of Healthcare Systems and the national immunization plans.
Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic is placing a huge strain on health systems, worldwide it forced to adapt, to innovate care management in some cases and it has had a major impact on citizens’ lives in several respects. One of the most important has been the limited access to different health services. Alternative organizational solutions are therefore needed to guarantee continuity and quality. Our commitment is to engage citizens and citizens’ associations across Europe to better know and implement health policies.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on citizens’ lives on several aspects. One of the most important has been the limited access to different health services. For Active Citizenship Network, the European branch of Cittadinanzattiva - a civic organization which promotes (since 1978 in Italy and since 2001 at EU level) citizens’ activism for the protection of everyone’s rights, maintaining the common good, and offering support to people in vulnerable conditions - it is not acceptable to respond to the immediate needs of citizens facing the Covid-19 pandemic simply by closing services. Instead, alternative organizational solutions are needed to guarantee continuity and quality.
The European Patients’ Rights Day has become a regular annual event on the European and national political agendas to inform, discuss and take commitments to improve patients’ rights in Europe and in each Member State. Every year, also thanks to the more than one hundred patient and civic associations of our network, the EPRD is celebrated in hundreds of cities and ways all around Europe (here there are some examples of the celebrations in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020).
We are looking for good examples of citizens’ engagement in health policies in this particular historical moment about:
On the occasion of the Annual European Patients 'Rights Day, "Together for Life" (TFL), historic national partner from Albania of ACN, celebrates its commitment to protect patients' rights with important legal awards.
Three children gained their rights after three years of efforts and commitment of "Together for Life" organisation in Albania to address the issue of children born with hearing problems.
The Administrative Court of Tirana decided to accept the request of the TFL's lawyer to compensate with 9,300,000 all the family of a 5-year-old patient with hearing problems, meanwhile for the second case the hospital decided to approve the agreement to include the child on the waiting list and the third case benefited from the surgery after one year of positive pressure on the public institutions.
In line with its commitment to energy policies at national and European level, and in an effort to improve energy efficiency through consumers’ energy friendly behaviors, Cittadinanzattiva - through its EU branch Active Citizenship Network - is actively participating to the NUDGE Project, whose objective is to systematically assess and fully unleash the potential of behavioral interventions towards achieving higher energy efficiency, paving the way to the generalized use of such interventions as a worthy addition to the policy-making toolbox.
The NUDGE project is funded by the EU’s funding programme for research and innovation Horizon 2020. More specifically, the project addresses EASME’s call LC-SC3-EC-4-2020 on “Socio-economic research: non- energy impacts and behavioral insights on energy efficiency interventions” and specifically scope (b) - Behavioral insights for energy efficiency interventions.
The project, which has a planned duration of 36 months, is carried out by a multidisciplinary team of 10 partners and trials take place in 5 different EU countries. Taking into consideration the Italian situation with regard to matters concerning renewable energies and also given the EU’s position on the importance of energy efficiency, Cittadinanzattiva decided to join the NUDGE consortium as the only Italian participant.
The online survey linked to the EU Project “NUDGE” is currently available in several languages! Click on the link to fill it in and let us know how you consume and save energy at home! Deadline is 31 of May!
Survey description:
One of the first steps of the project is to profile consumers by considering a variety of psychological (e.g., self-efficacy, value priorities, attitudes, outcome expectations) and contextual variables (household size and composition, economic incentives, technologies in use). This will be accomplished through the employment of surveys – realized through online structured questionnaires or interviews – aimed at capturing consumers’ perceptions of their own behavior and their original disposition against specific interventions conceived to diminish energy consumption.
The first phase of the project thus deals with pre-pilot user profiling based on survey data and aims at collecting and statistically evaluating survey-type data on a diverse set of consumers across Europe. These surveys will be used to record and evaluate the running behaviors of the pilot participants about energy-efficiency measures and actions; analyze the reactions of end users to the various behavioral interventions and derive predictive models of their energy-related behavior; classify different groups of end users on the basis of their energy-related behavior and explore their generalizability across pilots.
Aim of the survey:
The survey is used to gather information about the following aspects at household level:
- Household characteristics, building characteristics, and level of environmental conscience.
- Consumer behavior with respect to the energy consumption aspects
- Their intentions and perceptions with regard to the adoption of measures that enhance the energy efficiency
- Major obstacles to the adoption of more energy efficient behaviors.
Read more about the target audience of the survey!
The EU ambitiously aims to increase energy efficiency and mitigate the negative impacts of climate change by gradually reducing net greenhouse gas emissions and become climate-neutral by 2050. To achieve this and similar goals, much effort has been devoted to the development of digital infrastructure which allow energy consumer to monitor their energy consumption more accurately and efficiently. Nonetheless, energy efficiency requires radical behavioral changes in the energy-related behavior of consumers, starting from every-day activities such as the way people use heating and electric appliances.
The project “NUDging consumers towards enerGy Efficiency through behavioral science” (NUDGE) seeks to analyze the behavior of European citizens with concern the energy consumption and to consequently design and test nudging interventions on different segments of the population. Pilot projects will indeed be carries out in households, energy communities, and schools in five EU countries (Greece, Belgium, Germany, Portugal and Croatia). The research and experimentation of the NUDGE project also aims to develop recommendations tailored to each country and design more general policies at European level.
The project, deeply rooted in behavioral science methods, will investigate individual psychological and contextual variables underlying consumers’ attitudes in order to customize the design of behavioral interventions for them.To do this, it takes a mixed approach to the consumer analysis and intervention design with tasks combining surveys and field trials. The designed interventions are compared against traditional ones in field trials (pilots) in five different EU states, presenting remarkable diversity with regard to innovative energy usage scenarios, demographic and socio-economic variables of the involved populations, mediation platforms for operationalizing the intervention (smart mobile apps, dashboards, web portals, educational material and intergenerational learning practices).
More information:
The overarching goal of the NUDGE project is to examine and unleash the potential of behavioral interventions for long-term changes in energy efficiency behaviours, paving the way to the systematic application of such interventions as a worthwhile contribution to policy making. This will be achieved through behavioural interventions; a solid expertise in behavioural science; (mobile) user interface and policy design; synergies between different stakeholders (energy providers, co-operatives, and communities; consumer associations; and technology providers); as well as an extensive network of experts and industrial/consumer associations amplifying the potential for tangible impacts on policy making at all levels. In its effort to achieve its ultimate goal and improve energy efficiency, as well as to overcome the challenges resulting from the implementation of nudging techniques in the energy sector, the project has four major objectives:
- Objective 1: Tailor the design of behavioural interventions to individual psychological and contextual variables;
- Objective 2: Execute extensive field trials (pilots) that address multiple instances of consumer behaviour, implementing different mixes of behaviour-based and traditional interventions even across participants of the same pilot;
- Objective 3: Develop a systematic core and contextual research protocol to continuously measure the impact of the implemented behavioural interventions;
- Objective 4: Consolidate the findings of pilots into recommendations towards policy makers and relevant stakeholders.
Cittadinanzattiva APS
p.iva: 02142701008
via Imera, 2
00183 Roma
Tel: (+39) 06.36.71.81
Fax: (+39) 06.36.71.83.33
Rue Philippe Le Bon, 46
1000 Brussels - Belgium
