Dear EAN members, colleagues, and friends,
It gives me great pleasure to provide you with an update on some of our recent communications-related activities following one of our busiest months during my time as Chair of the EAN Communications Committee. This March was packed from start to finish with all sorts of events, from online training to face-to-face summits, showing that the EAN never stops communicating at every level.
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To start the month, the second year of the EAN Advocacy Training programme for neurology and brain health got underway on 3 March. I am delighted to report that—following a very successful first year, and thanks to many glowing reports of the benefits of taking part—interest in this year’s programme was enormous. We received 397 applications from 91 countries around the world, constituting a dramatic 230% increase compared to the first year and providing us with a very difficult approval process to narrow down the field to a manageable number of participants. In the end, 57 were accepted onto the second edition of the programme (slightly more than last year, due to the high number of outstanding candidates) and joined us for the first module of training, on Basics & Importance of Advocacy for Brain Health and Neurology. It was an honour and a wonderful experience for me as Scientific Director of the programme to be part of the faculty for this first module, along with EAN Past-President Paul Boon and Technical Officer of the World Health Organization’s Brain Health Unit, Neerja Chowdhary, and to engage with such an enthusiastic and dedicated group of young professionals, all of whom are committed to advancing their ability to advocate for brain health and neurology and for improving the health of people with neurological conditions. To learn more about this fully online opportunity to become a neurology and Brain Health Ambassador, which we aim to repeat in 2026, please visit the Advocacy Training page of the EAN website.
In the middle of the month, the EAN Communications Committee had the wonderful opportunity for a face-to-face meeting in Vienna, giving us a chance to review the progress of various projects and work on plans for forthcoming activities. Among the topics discussed was the continuing success of this very platform, eanNews, which has seen a 20% increase in readership over the last year, under the stewardship of Editor-in-Chief, Benedetta Bodini, and a committed team of contributing Communications Committee members, neurologists Letizia Leocani (EAN Website Editor), Isabella Colonna, Raphael Wurm, Viktoria Papp, and Agne Straukiene. The editorial team has made efforts to produce more engaging content, with more commentary on recent research, including an emphasis on video discussions. EAN President Elena Moro has also made her own contribution to the growing activity on eanNews, with the President’s Corner, a monthly column in which she answers your questions. This is a unique opportunity for some direct interaction with a top European neurologist in a major leadership position, so I urge you to look out for our social media posts and ask her anything you want about the EAN, its activities, projects, and plans. The questions and answers have provided some very interesting insights so far!
Less than a week after our Communications Committee meeting, the latest European Brain Health Summit took place in Brussels, with representatives from various medical associations, industry, patient organisations, the WHO, and European Parliament, joining EAN presidents past and present on 19 March for a morning of dialogue centring on the theme of ‘Brain Health for a Resilient Europe’. The discussions on brain health promotion in European countries, as well as the implementation of the WHO iGAP and how to reach its objectives, were insightful and inspiring, with input from a wide array of deeply knowledgeable stakeholders. I strongly encourage eanNews readers to watch the full recording of the summit on the EAN website to broaden your awareness of these crucial issues.
“Building the Home of neurology” continued five days later when EAN held its latest National Neurological Societies Forum, inviting presidents and delegates from national societies to gather and engage directly with the EAN. These events provide a way for EAN to communicate its own plans and outline how it can provide support, as well as to collect immediate feedback, and learn more about the specific needs of our member societies. If individual EAN members are the bricks that make up the ‘home of neurology’, then the national neurological societies—48 of which are Full Institutional EAN Members—are the mortar that binds them together. This is why the EAN invests time and effort into maintaining dialogue with our national partners and ensuring we are listening to each other, including via our national society liaison system. Each EAN Communication Committee member serves as a liaison for at least 4 of the 48 National Neurological Societies and we collect input and provide information to all the countries on a regular basis, in a continuous flow of collaboration.
Finally, this exceptionally productive and communicative month ended with the Brain Health Mission Forum on 31 March, bringing together strategic and supporting partners, neurological association representatives, and EAN board members for a comprehensive update on various activities relating to the Brain Health Mission from the Brain Health Mission Steering Committee. Many countries are developing their Brain Health plans and we at the EAN are supporting many initiatives such as the Brain School Challenge that is taking place for the second time in Finland and Austria and will soon also start in Greece. The Brain Health Mission engages all interested stakeholders from the public and private sectors and keeps them appraised of the latest developments and involved in future actions.
You can navigate our website to find all the information you want. The EAN website Editor-in-Chief Letizia Leocani is working with our EAN Head Office staff to make your navigation more and more easy and fruitful: https://www.ean.org/.
Consultations, updates, feedback, and reviews are woven into every major project EAN undertakes, because good communication is always the key to successful outcomes. Months like this March are a testament to the EAN’s commitment to keeping all channels open, to inform, to get informed, to imagine, to influence, and to meet the expectations that the neurology community from Europe and beyond is having on the EAN.
EAN communicates, EAN exists!
Best wishes
Matilde Leonardi
EAN Communications Committee Chair
