Over the years, we have worked on several themes and programmes. Below we present some of them.
From 2020 – 2025, Wemos led the five-year strategic Make Way partnership that was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With our partners we aimed to ensure that marginalized groups in all their diversity, especially youth, can fully realize their sexual and reproductive health and rights. The partner organizations used an intersectional lens to achieve this. Make Way was implementend in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and at the regional and global level.
Our partners:
In the project “Resilient against pandemics: now and in the future” (2022-2024), Wemos and the Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation worked together for access to affordable vaccines and medicines for all. We urged governments and pharmaceutical companies to fulfil their responsibilities on access to life-saving drugs through analysis, awareness-raising and policy advocacy. Some examples of our work in this project:
Wemos launched a public campaign in the Netherlands including satirical videos created by Dutch comedian Roel Maaldrink, interviews, infographics and an explainer video. It got the topic of fair medicine prices higher on the Dutch political agenda. See also our impact story about the campaign.
The Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation filed a lawsuit against pharmaceutical company AbbVie for making excessive profits on the rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira. The foundation calculated that AbbVie had overcharged the Dutch healthcare system by 1.2 billion euros between 2004 and 2018, crowding out other care. The lawsuit gained a lot of (inter)national media attention. The case is still ongoing.
The project was funded by the National Postcode Lottery.
Wemos was the lead organization of the three-year project Pillars of Health, which aimed to contribute to an equitable distribution of health and care workers in Europe, to ensure that all European citizens have equal access to health workers. Together with our partner organizations, we conducted research, shared data, and engaged in joint advocacy at both EU level and within and between EU countries. The goal of the project was to influence policymakers so they actively implement policies that contribute to a strong and sustainable health workforce across the EU.
Over the course of the project, we called on European policymakers to take united action at the European level to address the health workforce shortages across the EU. In addition to sharing our findings through reports and webinars, we were also invited to present our recommendations at the European Institute of Health and Sustainable Development (EIHSD) conference in the European Parliament in November 2022. We also published the below animation video, in which we have summarized our recommendations and call to action to policymakers.
Our project partners included the Center for Health Policies and Services (Romania), Media Education Centre (Serbia), the Association of Democratic Physicians (Verein demokratischer Ärzt*innen (vdää*)) (Germany), and the VU Athena Institute (Netherlands). The project ran from 2021 to 2023.
Wemos was the lead organization of the project Action for Health and Equity: Addressing medical Deserts (AHEAD), a European Commission-funded partnership that focused on reducing health inequalities by addressing medical deserts in Europe. We set out to better understand medical deserts in Italy, Moldova, the Netherlands, Romania and Serbia, and raise awareness about the need for urgent joint European action, to ultimately contribute to improving access to health care and sufficient, skilled and motivated health workers. We aimed to do this by building knowledge on medical deserts, designing a visual tool to identify medical deserts, and by proposing policy options for medical deserts in participatory consensus-building workshops with local and national stakeholders.
With the project, we put medical deserts on the agenda at EU-level during a policy dialogue event that we organized in the European Parliament, presenting our policy recommendations to tackle medical deserts.
AHEAD consisted of Center for Health Policies and Services (Romania), Cittadinanzattiva (Italy), Media Education Centre (Serbia), National School of Public Health Management (Moldova), VU Athena Institute (Netherlands) and Wemos. The project ran from April 2021 – May 2023.
From March 2020 to December 2022, Wemos was the lead organization in the “International consortium promoting Covid-19 Innovations for All” (CIFA). Leading experts and health organizations worked together to mobilize support and political will for equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines by sharing relevant technologies and knowledge. Consortium members brought in their extensive knowledge and experience in access to medicines and intellectual property, as well as relevant networks at national, regional (specifically the Americas and the European Union) and global levels, and contacts with influential media.
Our consortium partners were: Corporación Innovarte (Chile), Knowledge Ecology International (United States), Medicines Law & Policy (Netherlands), Health Action International (Netherlands) and the Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation (Netherlands)
From 2016-2020, we were part of the Health Systems Advocacy Partnership (HSAP), together with Amref Health Africa, African Centre for Global Health and Social Transformation (ACHEST) and Health Action International (HAI), with funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The aim was to fundamentally strengthen health systems in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, with a focus on essential, quality sexual and reproductive health services.
Wemos focused on two themes: financing for health and human resources for health. We analysed international policies affecting health systems and examined their effects on partner countries. We then used these country studies for evidence-based lobbying towards the Dutch government and relevant European and international institutions. Together with African and international NGOs, we strengthened national, regional and international lobbying.
This video explains the interconnectedness between health systems and sexual and reproductive health and rights, and that that strong health systems should be a political priority.
With the Harmful Substances programme (2013-2018), we advocated a safe, EDC-free living environment for Dutch and European citizens. We elevated the topic on the Dutch political agenda, influenced the development of criteria for EDCs and the development of a European strategy, and generated a lot of media attention.
For years, Wemos worked on the topic of clinical trials in low- and middle-income countries. Our reports on trials in Egypt, Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa showed that existing ethical guidelines were not always followed, exposing subjects to health risks and human rights violations. We often worked together with SOMO and Public Eye on this.
From 2013 until early 2016, Wemos coordinated the European project Health Workers for All (HW4All), in which civil society organizations from Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom collaborated to contribute to a sustainable health workforce policy worldwide. Project partners developed and disseminated policy analysis tools, and organized workshops and dialogues at national and European level. In addition, they monitored how member states identify and address future shortages of healthcare personnel. The project contributed to the Joint Action on Health Workforce Planning and Forecasting.
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