The Health Futures Project forms part of the European Health Forum Gastein's celebration of its 20th anniversary - what better way to mark the passing of time than to look ahead to imagine what the future might hold for the health of European people?
The project combines two key stages:
Background research, centred around a set of semi-structured interviews with expert contributors of a wide range of different backgrounds, with the aim to identify the factors that are likely to have greatest influence on the health of people in the EU. The outputs from the interviews and supplementary research were summarised in a series of mind maps.
We then highlighted three glimpses of what the future of health might look like, based around four areas of unsustainability: health systems, environment, disjointed investment in health technology and inequalities in health and wealth.
A workshop that brought together a different set of experts - the scenario builders, whose task it was to draw on their own experience and judgement to expand and refine each glimpse into a fuller picture of health in 20 years' time, exploring how their scenario might affect different interest groups.
Participants - Experts
Participants - Scenario builders
Mind Maps - Future Developments
First results of the project were presented at the European Health Forum Gastein 2017 during a forum session on Health Futures in a post-truth world.
Health Futures at the EHFG 2017