Mobilising novel finance models for health promotion and disease prevention

Project Information

Invest4Health

Grant agreement ID: 101095522

DOI

10.3030/101095522

Project closed

EC signature date 11 November 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 30 June 2026

Funded under

• Health

Total cost

€ 4 468 658,69

EU contribution

€ 4 468 658,69

Coordinated by

REGION SKANE
Sweden

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Invest4Health (Mobilising novel finance models for health promotion and disease prevention)

Reporting period: 2024-07-01 to 2025-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

MOBILISING FINANCE MODELS FOR HEALTH PROMOTION AND DISEASE PREVENTION

Making Health an Investment
Invest4Health (I4H) is a Horizon Europe project focused on transforming health financing for better health and well-being. Invest4Health aims to enhance health promotion and disease prevention by incentivizing investments in these critical areas. The project seeks to unlock the full potential of health promotion and disease prevention by mobilizing novel finance models that benefit individuals, societies, economies, and the environment. I4H challenges the status quo in healthcare and explores a fresh financing perspective, viewing health as an investment rather than a cost. I4h is dedicated to building a compelling case for investment and shaping policies that optimize health promotion and disease prevention resources.

Who Benefits: Driving Positive Change
Through validated Smart Capacitating Investment (SCI) models, I4H aims to enable decision-makers to pool resources and share risks, shifting the focus from input-based budgeting to outcome-driven analysis to unlock the full potential of health promotion and disease prevention.

Our Actions: Putting Smart Capacitating Investment into Practice
I4H develops an SCI definition and a taxonomy to see various opportunities and formats for SCI. We create innovative finance methods, develop suitable business models, and test them in real-world settings through testbeds. For sustainability and scaling, I4H collaborates with local stakeholders to explore how to scale SCI to deliver equitable health promotion and disease prevention services. We promote an approach that encourages funders to proactively engage and invest in services and interventions that are not just effective but also cost-effective.

Who Benefits: Regional Testbeds
We bring scientific, social, economic, and technological partners together, all represented in our partnerships. Economically, the SCI models are projected to generate substantial return on investment, increase spending on health promotion and disease prevention, and secure financial commitments from key actors at regional level.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

>During the first 18 months the efforts were to get people and processes in place (i) to gather knowledge and strengthen a working concept of smart capacitating investment (ii), to decide how to apply that insight to SCI in combination with related tools and methodologies (iii), to achieve readiness for the initial testbeds to pilot selected SCI compliant models and tools to a chosen health promotion or disease prevention intervention (iv), to get consortium members and stakeholders involved to buy-in, and (v) to establish the Citizen and Patient Advisory Group.

Progress and project focuses
The second reporting period (months 19-36) the project focuses have been (a) to finalise the more research-oriented deliverables and to facilitate the collective sense-making within the project, (b) to continue with the large-scale implementations in the four regional testbeds and follow the process of integrating and evaluating the project results into the testbed, (c) to design a comprehensive SCI training program, based on project results and experience from the regional testbeds, to be available for training of a 2nd tranche of regional testbeds, (d) to launch and implement an Open Call to engage additional regions to participate in the project as a 2nd tranche of testbeds., and (e) to start to explore and draft a business plan for a SCI Social Franchising concept as a novel entitative to enable replication and scaling

Citizen involvement
A key objective within the Invest4Health project is to develop learning in respect of how active citizenship and citizen engagement can be designed in relation to SCI-based activities. In particular, the DoA highlights the need to develop a better understanding of how citizens can be enabled to take an active role in the co-governance of SCI-based initiatives as one of several stakeholder groups. The project has developed a flexible and practice-oriented concept that has been embedded at project level. This concept is referred to as the Citizen and Patient Advisory Group (CPAG). By implementing the CPAG, the project expects to more efficiently (i) deal with the complexity of SCI and expectations for involvement at system level, (ii) manage the diversity of the regional testbeds, and (iii) review project findings from a public perspective.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

>At a global scale we currently face quite a few challenges, where climate change and health are two of the most critical. In discussions on how to effectively meet and intervene with these challenges quite a hope is given to “collaborative multi-actor initiatives”, i.e. the same structural approach as is the base for SCI-based models and tools. We thus strongly believe that the Invest4Health project will provide significant contributions to the state-of-the-art through validated real-world cases based on SCI-compatible models and tools.

The key result from the project is the SCI Conceptual Framework that visualise how SCI-compatible models and tools relate and inter-play. The SCI Business model is the overarching model, that is based on the Core SCI values (such as enabling collaboration among multi-stakeholders to address a share purpose), and that comprises SCI-compatible models for Value Creation, Financing, and Operations. The Collaborative Platform enables the inter-play among the models as well as different SCI-related functions such as co-governance and stakeholder management.