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External Relations
European Pharmaceutical Students’ Association
EPSA Advocacy Initiatives EPSA aims to collaborate with professional and students’ organisations to showcase the current state of European pharmaceutical students and to represent their voice to stakeholders throughout Europe. EPSA has been present in Brussels actively for more than a decade. This year we are represented in Brussels by 8 EPSA Team members who work part-time at seven internships-providers. These internship organisations include PGEU (Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union), EAHP (European Association of Hospital Pharmacists), AESGP (Association of the European Self-care Industry), Medicines for Europe, EFPIA (European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations), SIOPE (the European Society for Paediatric Oncology) and DIA (Drug Information Agency). With these EPSA Team members in Brussels, EPSA is represented externally at different events, particularly those of European institutions and different stakeholders. This enables EPSA to represent the voice of over 100,000 European pharmaceutical students on matters that are interesting and vital to them. EPSA has established Educational and Professional Affairs Advocacy Platform where representatives of EPSA Member Associations express their opinions, steer EPSA’s future directions and exchange good practices among each other. The Platform currently has 50 Representatives across Europe. EPSA has thus created a Policy Newsletter which covers European and national developments that are related to EPSA students, news from EPSA Team members present in Brussels and sharing advocacy initiatives of EPSA Member Associations. Ending 2018 with a release of EPSA Survey Report on Obstacles in Student Mobility, EPSA has been focusing on areas where European pharmaceutical students are confronted with many more obstacles compared to students of other studies in Europe. That has led EPSA to collaborate with other associations which have as a core focus mobility and advocate for it. EPSA has established great collaboration with ESN (Erasmus Student Network) with which we recently released a joint EPSA-ESN position on obstacles in student mobility. Additionally, on the field of education, EPSA has been active in the field of Interprofessional Education (IPE), its current inclusion and lack of it within the curricula and training of healthcare students. EPSA carried out the survey on IPE during the summer of 2019 with almost 500 responses from 32 European countries. In November 2019, EPSA released IPE Report where we showcased the current status of IPE in higher education of pharmaceutical studies. EPSA plans to do the joint work together with EHSAS (the European Healthcare Students’ Associations’ Summit) on the topic by releasing a joint policy document. Furthermore, EPSA was co-organiser of ‘Implementation of One Health in undergraduate education’ in collaboration with professional organisations representing community pharmacists (PGEU), dentists (CED), medical doctors (CPME), and veterinarians (FVE).
