• The Migrant Friendly Hospitals Project – in a nutshell •

The European project “Migrant-friendly hospitals” (MFH), sponsored by the European Commission, DG Health and Consumer Protection (SANCO) brought together hospitals from 12 member states of the European Union, a scientific institution as co-ordinator, experts, international organisations and networks. These partners agreed to put migrant-friendly, culturally competent health care and health promotion higher on the European health policy agenda and to support other hospitals by compiling practical knowledge and instruments. One major strategy to test feasibility of becoming a migrant-friendly and culturally competent organisation was implementation and evaluation of three selected Subprojects in the diverse reality of European hospitals, with the local implementation financed out of hospital funds, but supported in a European benchmarking process.

The main costs of European co-operation were covered by EU funding. LBISHM as a co-ordinator also received co-financing from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Education and invested own funds. The partner hospitals had to finance their local quality development projects out of their own budgets.

Experiences and results were presented at a Final Conference “Hospitals in a Culturally Diverse Europe”, Amsterdam, Dec 9-11, 2004.

European Recommendations for the Policy, but also the hospital level and other stakeholders were launched as “Amsterdam Declaration towards Migrant Friendly Hospitals in an ethno-culturally diverse Europe”.

To assure sustainability of the MFH movement, a Task Force on Migrant Friendly Hospitals has been established in the framework of the WHO Network on Health Promoting Hospitals.

This final report includes experiences, results, instruments, recommendations developed in this project.

• Amsterdam Declaration >>

• Further MFH Activities: MFH Task Force >>

• Project Summary •
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