22. Territorial Health and primary care reforms in EU: policy integration, community-based care, and tension in the triple transition
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Sessione 22
Territorial Health and primary care reforms in EU: policy integration, community-based care, and tension in the triple transition
Coordinatori/coordinatrici di sessione: Stefano Neri, Emanuele Polizzi, Vanessa Turri
Corresponding Author:
Description
The COVID-19 pandemic, demographic ageing and the rising prevalence of chronic conditions have intensified pressures on European health systems, exposing the limits of hospital-centred, standardised and predominantly biomedical models of care. In response, supranational organisations, national and sub-national governments and policy communities have renewed their focus on primary health care, promoting integration, territorialisation and community-based approaches to strengthen prevention, continuity and proximity services. However, reform design and implementation often occur in welfare systems shaped by performance-based governance, managerial accountability and fragmentation between health and social provision. These legacies constrain change and generate tensions, limiting socio-health integration, community mobilisation and a shift towards prevention, community care and long-term care. Frictions are further amplified by the triple ecological, digital and demographic transition, which demands coordination across sectors, policy domains and levels of governance.
This session invites empirically grounded contributions (qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods), including comparative analyses, that examine policy design, regulatory arrangements and implementation of proximity-based health reforms in European contexts. We welcome contributions on both policy outcomes and implementation dynamics, asking: which policy instruments and governance mechanisms integrate health and social care? How do funding models, performance regimes and regulatory frameworks enable or hinder community-oriented care? What trade-offs emerge in needs assessment, resource allocation and cross-sector coordination at the territorial level?
We particularly welcome papers focusing on:
- governance arrangements and organisational models for socio-health integration and their evaluation;
- coordination between health and social care and related policies such as long-term care, disability, mental health, housing, poverty, migration and ageing;
- territorial inequalities, access to services (inner vs metropolitan areas) and impacts on vulnerable groups;
- workforce policies, professional roles, multiprofessional teams, skills development and working conditions;
- citizen and community involvement, co-production and accountability in territorial and local welfare systems;
- digital health and data governance (telemedicine, platforms), including implications for equity, privacy, care work, and regulation;
- environmental and climate policies, prevention and chronic care from a planetary health perspective.
