The European Heart Network (EHN) is pleased to launch the second volume of its Patient Advocacy Handbook, Shaping Policy with Patients: A Practical Guide for National Heart Organisations, designed to support heart organisations in meaningfully integrating patient perspectives into cardiovascular health policy, research and advocacy.
Building on EHN Patient Advocacy Handbook – Volume I, which focused on empowering individuals living with cardiovascular disease (CVD) to become effective advocates, this new volume shifts the focus to organisations and the structures, resources and strategies needed to ensure meaningful and sustained patient involvement.
Developed by EHN, the handbook provides national heart organisations with practical guidance, tools and frameworks to strengthen patient engagement, foster collaboration and ensure that lived experiences contribute to shaping policies and decisions affecting cardiovascular health.
Meaningful patient involvement goes beyond consultation. It requires organisations to create opportunities for patients to actively contribute to decision-making, policy development and research, recognising their lived experience as an essential form of expertise.
The handbook explores how organisations can identify, recruit, train and support patient advocates while establishing the internal structures and resources needed for effective engagement.
It also offers practical approaches to moving from individual participation towards co-creation and shared decision-making, ensuring that patient perspectives are integrated throughout the advocacy process.
Through practical examples, ready-to-use templates and organisational frameworks, the handbook aims to help heart organisations of different sizes and capacities build sustainable patient engagement practices.
By strengthening the role of patients within organisations, we can help ensure that cardiovascular health policies are not only developed for patients, but shaped with them.
If you’d like to get in touch on this, please contact:
Mehitabel HollerPatients and Research Managermholler@ehnheart.org+32 488 51 41 26