Stroke in women webinar

Stroke in women webinar

The World Stroke Academy is running a free webinar with international experts about stroke in women on 16 September 2022, 17.00 CET.

The session will focus on atrial fibrillation, stroke prevention and stroke in pregnancy and post childbirth.

AF and Stroke in Women – Dr Marialuisa Zedde (Italy)Stroke Prevention in Women – Professor Ana Catarina Fonseca (Portugal)Stroke in Pregnancy and Puerperium – Professor Anita Arsovska (North Macedonia)

The webinar is for everyone who is interested in learning more about this topic.

Book your place here

 

 

SAFE welcomes new board members at the General Assembly in June

SAFE welcomes new board members at the General Assembly in June

We welcomed three new SAFE Board members at our General Assembly meeting on 17 June 2022.

Jan Konig (Czech Republic), Dorina Dobreva (Bulgaria) and Marianne Tangen (Norway) applied for the roles and were voted in by our members.

Find out from Jan what motivated him to apply and what he would like to achieve in this role youtu.be/VmmPfFVQyI4

The assembly re-elected Chris Macey (Ireland) who will retain his role as Treasurer and Marina Charalambous (Cyprus) who will retain her role as Secretary.

The SAFE board has appointed two new honorary members – Grethe Lunde (Norway) and Jon Barrick (UK), as a thank you to all the hard work and support they have given to SAFE during their time on the Board. 

Other motions approved were the: 

  • Minutes of General Assembly June 2021 
  • 2021 Annual Accounts and the 2022 Budget 
  • New power of attorney 
  • Removal of France AVC as a member of SAFE 

Our member’s meeting – held on the same day – brought together more than 50 representatives from stroke support organisations in 25 countries. This was our first face to face meeting in over two years. The meeting gave us the opportunity to tell our members about our work, our achievements and involve them in developing our future strategy.

We welcomed special guests representing local member Fundacio Ictus, who celebrated their 15-year anniversary, and Professor Avril Drummond, Chair of the European Life After Stroke Forum Scientific Committee. Our President Harriet Proios gave an update on the award-winning Fast Heroes – saving the world one grandparent at a time – campaign. 

 

New eLearning course – Communications for Patient Advocacy

New eLearning course – Communications for Patient Advocacy

The European Federation of Neurological Associations (EFNA) has launched a new eLearning course on Communications for Patient Advocacy.

The series is divided into three modules – Communicating with impact, Communicating persuasively and Presentation skills for public speaking.

The course is the latest in EFNA’s Training Initiatives for Neurology Advocates programme. It is free, though registration is required. It is available in English, but subtitles in other languages can be enabled.

Learn more and register at www.efna.net/elearning

Essentials of Stroke Care Guide available to help improve stroke care

Essentials of Stroke Care Guide available to help improve stroke care

The Essentials of Stroke Care guide is for healthcare professionals to support them improve stroke treatment and care and to help implement the Stroke Action Plan for Europe.

It contains an overview of evidence-based interventions and the minimum standards of care a stroke survivor should expect through their entire chain of care including the pre-hospital, acute hospital stay, rehabilitation and life after stroke.

Listen to Professor Thorsten, from the European Stroke Organisation, talk about why he created this guide as part of the Stroke Action Plan for Europe, read the Essentials of Stroke Care or find out more about the Stroke Action Plan for Europe

SAFE welcomes the publication of the EU Healthier Together plan

SAFE welcomes the publication of the EU Healthier Together plan

The European Commission recently launched the EU Non-Communicable Diseases Initiative – Healthier Together to reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCD), including stroke, and improve health and wellbeing.

From December 2021 to May 2022, SAFE and the European Stroke Organisation (ESO) worked closely together with DG Sante – the EU Commission department responsible for their policies on health and food safety – in the co-creation process for the EU NCD initiative.

This has resulted in the publication of a toolkit to guide Member states and EU policymakers towards a holistic and coordinated approach for health promotion and disease prevention, treatment and care, for diseases including stroke.

The plan covers the period from 2022-2027 and prioritises four disease groups including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, mental health and neurological disorders and health determinants for all major NCDs. Recognising its significant health burden and opportunities for improvement, we are delighted to see that stroke is specifically drawn out as a priority area under mental health and neurological disorders.

The initiative underlines the vital importance of implementing a national stroke plan, increasing public awareness, and improving screening, encompassing the entire chain of care from primary prevention to life after stroke.

This builds on the Stroke Action Plan for Europe 2018-2030, developed by SAFE in collaboration with the European Stroke Organisation.

We look forward to working with DG Sante and the European Commission in implementing the initiative to improve stroke prevention, care and life after stroke for all affected by stroke in Europe.

The full report can be found here: https://t.co/Iofn3e46NW

Harriet Proios, SAFE President, added:

We welcome this response by the European Commission to the ongoing efforts of the health community to prioritise non-communicable diseases (NCDs) on the EU agenda. We worked together with the European Stroke Organisation on a joint response to the consultation which was based on the Stroke Action Plan for Europe and the Essentials of Stroke care guideline.

 

We are delighted that stroke is drawn out as a priority area and that the Stroke Action Plan will be implemented across Europe. This initiative gives us an ideal opportunity to raise the profile of stroke within our countries and we hope it will contribute to reducing the stroke burden, and improve the quality of life of those living with stroke in Europe.

European Life After Stroke Series March 2022 event – now available on demand

European Life After Stroke Series March 2022 event – now available on demand

If you missed our virtual event in March, you can now watch both plenaries at your leisure at our European Life After Stroke website www.elasf.org https://www.elasf.org/resource-centre/

Our next event will be on 9 November 2022. For the latest updates and more information on our Life After Stroke series, sign up to our enewsletter

Thank you for the excellent presentations including stroke survivors stories/experiences. I will definitely be aiming to embed some of these thoughts into my practise to empower my patients to be equipped for self-management in order to give them quality of life as stroke survivors.

Event participant, Plenary 1, Life After Stroke: Be inspired and share control – the added value of self-management

Thank you so much for such an interesting presentation. It was particularly interesting to hear from ‘expert witnesses’ and real- life experience of challenges and coping strategies.

Event participant, Plenary 2, Life after stroke: Communication in everyday life