Healthcare Access in Rural Border Regions. Realizing Patient Rights Across European Borders

The fellowship – Healthcare Access in Rural Border Regions.

Realizing Patient Rights Across European Borders (HARBOR) – will launch the first cross-national and multi-scalar study of cross-border interactions and their impact on access to healthcare in rural and disadvantaged border areas in Europe.

Developing a novel conceptual framework in which borders and cross-border interactions are an integral part of healthcare territories, the project aims to close the gap in regional studies and social policy literature on the provision of health care in European border regions.

Building on in-depth data from four countries (Belgium, France, Norway and Sweden) and from the EU institutions, HARBOR will provide new, gender-sensitive, comparative knowledge about how the EU, national, regional and local authorities can ensure quality health care in disadvantaged, rural regions.

The project will develop an original analytic framework which will allow scholars to bridge insights from the scholarly literature in comparative health studies and border studies. Access to timely and affordable healthcare is one of the key principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights. The fellowship will produce new knowledge to help make this a reality.

The fellowship will identify facilitators of and barriers against cross-border co-operation.

The project will additionally make proposals for ways to reconcile territoriality bound social rights and supply planning with cross-border mobility and potential for pooling resource.

An experienced researcher (Dr Alban Davesne, France) will collaborate with a centre of gravity for the study of European social policy (Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway) and a leading research centre with international expertise on European health policy (secondment at The European Social Observatory, Belgium) for intersectoral knowledge transfer, career development, and European added value.