About SPA
The Strategic Pediatric Alliance Consortium (SPA) is not an additional pediatric organization in the European scenario. It is an alliance action network among existing major European Association, Societies and Confederations.
SPA foundations were laid down during the “1st International Conference on Pediatric Primary Care” held in May 2011 in Tel Aviv, Israel, and officially developed as a Consortium in the course of the “Europaediatrics 2011” Congress held in Vienna, among European Paediatric Association (EPA), European Academy of Paediatrics (EAP), European Confederation of Primay Care Paediatricians (ECPCP) and various National European Societies and Associations. The intent of SPA is of promoting the importance of unifying, and thereby strengthening, the individual efforts of European professional health-care organizations (Associations, Societies and Confederations) in order to work more efficiently and collectively to influence the opinions of governmental administrators, politicians and relevant EU Institutions (European Parliament, UEMS etc).
Therefore, SPA is open to the major International and National European Pediatric Societies/Associations/Confederations with the objective of promoting strong advocacy and political intervention in order to ensure the delivery of high quality health care to children throughout Europe.
Its activities are developed in form of projects promoted, discussed and shared by the representatives of Associations, Societies and Confederations active in the consortium.
ACTIVITIES and PROJECTS
From the founding meeting of June 2011 in Vienna, the Consortium has been very active from an organizational point of view and during a strategic working group meeting held in Istanbul in December 2011, the Strategic Pediatric Alliance promoted a Questionnaire on Pediatric Primary Care in Europe, which results are presented and discussed at the SPA meeting Prague in May 2012. The aim of this questionnaire was twofold: (a) to collect information on the current status of pediatric primary care in Europe and (b) to gain an in-depth understanding of what are the new responsibilities that the international community of pediatricians must assume towards todays’ children who are living in a society undergoing profound and constant changes where, among other things, the primary care pediatrician is at risk of progressively disappearing.
The results from the questionnaire will be instrumental in delineating a Position Paper and a discussion on what should be the next steps to take in order to establish effective relations between the “Alliance”, representing the main Pediatric European Organizations, and the relevant EU institutions that will be needed in order to create strong and effective political interventions and advocacy for the children of Europe.