ESE Advocacy Representation Scheme (EARS)
The ESE Advocacy Representation Scheme (EARS) keeps ESE members, and the wider European endocrine community up-to-date with ESE’s Policy and Advocacy activities. Members via the Presidents of the National Societies within the ESE Council of Affiliated Societies (ECAS) and direct sign up to the Newsletter).
Our quarterly newsletters will provide you with key developments from the EU affecting endocrinologists and patients, ESE’s activities in this arena as well as events, research funding opportunities and key news stories relevant to the endocrine community throughout in Europe and beyond. If you are not an ESE Member, you can sign up to receive the EARS Newsletter here.
We would like to thank all of the ECAS Societies for their support and involvement in the Policy and Advocacy activity that ESE undertakes on behalf of the European endocrine community of over 22 500 clinicians, clinician scientists, scientists, researchers, nurses and allied health professionals.
Because hormones matter, you have entrusted the European Society of Endocrinology with the task of representing the European endocrine community as VOICE for ENDOCRINOLOGY in Brussels.
In November 2019, following extensive consultation with the ESE Council of Affiliated Societies representatives, it was agreed to set up an ESE Advocacy Representation Scheme (EARS). At the ECAS meeting in May 2020 this was discussed again and formally ratified. It was then presented to the ESE Membership at the AGM held on 26 May 2020.
EARS was formally launched in October 2020.
Becoming part of the EARS Community is no cost to ESE members, and all members of the National Affiliated Societies represented by the ESE Council of Affiliated Societies (ECAS). The small annual fee of €2.50 per ECAS Society member is paid by the ECAS National Societies This contribution helps support ESE’s Policy and Advocacy work on behalf of all our members and the whole European endocrine community and raising the profile on the importance of hormones in good health and wellbeing.
• Receive regular e-newsletter updates on the Policy and Advocacy work of ESE undertaken on your behalf.
• Have the opportunity to be involved with consultation on, and engagement with, ESE Policy and Advocacy activities.
• Have your voice heard as part of Europe’s community of endocrine professionals.
• Have access to additional resources, such as ESE’s White Paper “Hormones in European Health Policies: Contributing towards a healthier Europe” (published May 2021).
• Receive invitations to sessions at ECE and other events around Policy and Advocacy and related topics, such as research funding.
ESE’s Mission Statement -‘Shaping the Future of Endocrinology’ - means that we actively engage with different stakeholders in creating a European and broader international environment that recognises the important place of ‘endocrine health' in the development of future health care policies and support to research programmes.
The Policy and Advocacy activities of ESE focus on three areas that are of strategic importance to the European and global health care agenda:
1. Achieving greater health care effectiveness and resilience through health promotion and disease prevention, with a specific focus on the post-COVID-19 recovery and impact on and from endocrine and metabolic diseases. This applies to both prevalent and rare diseases.
2. Supporting the Cancer Mission, provide input to the ‘Beating Cancer Plan’ and stimulate research with a focus on the endocrine origins and consequences.
3. Engaging in EU debates around climate change and the environment with a focus on endocrine disruptors.
Our Mission is to ‘Shape the Future of Endocrinology’ – a statement that includes many different aspects, from impacting on the many debates around public health and the important roles of hormones in European Health policies, to supporting the endocrine discipline.
ESE engages with the European Commission and Parliament in many debates that shape European Health Care policies.
Over the last 12 months, these engagements have been about inserting the hormone health perspective to the Horizon Europe research programme, the Beating Cancer Plan, the support to rare diseases as part of the European Reference Networks, and more recently, driven by the COVID 19 pandemic and its impact on European health care, the EU4 Health programme.
The Commission’s Green Deal and as part of that the Chemical Strategy for Sustainability needs to include a strong emphasis on endocrine disruptors, a major contributor to the susceptibility to many non-communicable diseases.
With the publication of the White Paper ‘Hormones in European Health Policies: How endocrinologists can contribute towards a healthier Europe’, ESE provided a hormone-related policy framework across the areas of prevalent conditions such as cancer and obesity as well as rare diseases, and the efforts to reduce the burden of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs). This White Paper has already opened doors to interactions with policymakers, with more opportunities to come.
European Hormone Day (launched in May 2022) provides another opportunity annually for us to come together to raise awareness of hormones, good hormone health under the banner of ‘Because Hormones Matter’.
ESE also works with the Biomedical Alliance in several areas. One is related to mitigating the impact of Plan S – the initiative around open access to publications related to publicly funded research – where we need to draw the attention to the impact this may have on publication options for young researchers, and those from lower income countries.
ESE is equally supportive to the call to move forward with a European Health Technology Assessment (HTA) structure, to address the persisting health inequalities across Europe. ESE is also engaged with the Education Committee of the Alliance, supporting the role of societies in ongoing medical education for their members.
The Biomed Alliance (Biomedical Alliance in Europe) is an NGO representing 33 leading European research and medical societies uniting more than 400 000 researchers and healthcare professionals.
Read more about our Policy and Advocacy work