The European Kidney Forum

On 28 January 2025, from 15:30 to 17:30 CET, EKHA will host its annual European Kidney Forum policy event at the European Parliament in Brussels.

This year’s European Kidney Forum, titled “Early Detection, Better Outcomes: Advancing Kidney Disease Screening in the EU,” will highlight the critical need for timely detection and screening of kidney disease. The event will feature contributions from healthcare professionals, patient advocates, and policymakers.

Hosted by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) Tomislav Sokol (EPP, Croatia) and András Kulja (EPP, Hungary), the Forum will be held in a hybrid format—at the European Parliament with limited in-person capacity, and via livestream. The programme includes a Roundtable discussion followed by a networking reception.

28 JUNE FROM 15.00-17.00 CEST IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT IN BRUSSEL

The 2023 European Kidney Forum: ‘The future of kidney care – Investing in green nephrology to meet the European Green Deal Targets’!

On 28 June, from 15:00 to 17:00 CEST, the European Kidney Health Alliance (EKHA) and the MEP Group for Kidney Health hosted the European Kidney Forum in the European Parliament in Brussels.

The 2023 European Kidney Forum focused on the value of investing in green nephrology to meet the European Green Deal targets. The environmental impact of dialysis is particularly large, given its high rates of water consumption, waste creation, and greenhouse gas emissions. Simultaneously, environmental changes lead to serious disruptions of safe and effective kidney care, and foster the emergence of new cases of kidney disease. Against this backdrop, efforts to ensure the ecological optimisation of dialysis are crucial.

On 15 June 2022 from 15:15 to 17:15 CEST, EKHA hosted its annual event, the European Kidney Forum, in the European Parliament in Brussels, in a hybrid format. This year’s theme was focused on: The Decade of the Kidney™: 10 years to bring innovative and green treatments to kidney patients in Europe. The event was followed by a networking reception from 17:30 to 19:00 CEST in the European Parliament to celebrate EKHA’s 15^th anniversary.

This event was organised as part of the Decade of the Kidney’, an EKHA-led campaign which aims to put the spotlight on kidney disease at EU level within the next ten years. The discussions were focusing on identifying the challenges with current kidney disease treatments (dialysis and transplantation) from a patient, society and environmental perspective, and exploring ways to ramp up innovation. We have gather insights from European patients, policy makers, healthcare professionals and scientists but also looked at inspiring examples and success stories from the United-States with US policy makers and patients.

The European Kidney Forum is the EKHA annual policy event which brings together various stakeholders including policy makers, health professionals, academics and patients to discuss practical and forward-looking policy solutions to the benefits of kidney patients in Europe. 

This year’s Forum was organised as part of the Decade of the Kidney™ campaign, an EKHA-led initiative that aims to put the spotlight on Kidney Disease at EU level for the next ten years.

The Forum was introduced by EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Stella Kyriakides, who reaffirmed her support to EKHA, the Decade of the Kidney™ campaign, and CKD patients across Europe who have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the eve of World Kidney Day, 11 March, EKHA organised the 2020 edition of its annual European Kidney Forum, entitled ‘A Shared Vision for Improving Organ Donation & Transplantation in the EU Beyond 2020″. 

The Forum called for renewed political momentum to optimise donation and transplantation of organs in Europe. The forum was introduced by EKHA President, Raymond Vanholder, who highlighted that although transplantation is a live-saving procedure, substantial discrepancies in transplantation rates remain throughout Europe. EKHA led the EU’s Thematic Network on Organ Donation and Transplantation, which published a Joint Statement setting out policy calls and recommendations as part of a joint vision for the coming decade.

On 25 June 2019, EKHA held its 6^th Annual Kidney Forum in Brussels. As previous editions, the event gathered policymakers from the European Commission, national competent authorities, patient associations, medical professionals, and representatives from the private sector.

The 2019 European Kidney Forum aimed to tackle the fundamental question “Are we meeting the needs of patients” in Organ Donation and Transplantation. The event offered an occasion to introduce the EKHA-led EU Thematic Network on Organ Donation and Transplantation as a powerful vehicle to shape future policy for organ donation and transplantation in Europe. Recurrent topics addressed during the Forum included the factors determining national differences; challenges of increasing donation and transplantation activity; patient empowerment and raising public awareness; the role of registries and improving data availability and quality; the mandate of the EU and governance and cooperation at different levels. The panel discussion made for a candid solution-oriented dialogue on Organ Donation and Transplantation. Experiences and good practices were shared in order to help move the dial in Europe, and to enable success stories and functioning models to be discussed and debated with a view to help raising the bar in other settings.

EKHA held its 2018 European Kidney Forum on 26 April in Brussels. Organized under the auspices of the MEP Group for Kidney Health, the event gathered representatives from the European Commission and Parliament, patient associations, kidney doctors and representatives from the private sector to take stock on kidney transplantation in the EU and to discuss next steps on the matter.

The event featured speeches from MEP Hilde Vautmans (Belgium) and MEP Karin Karin Kadenbach (Austria), Stefaan Van der Spiegel from European Commission’s DG Sante, Prof Rainer Oberbauer from the European Society for Organ Transplantation, Dr Vianda Stel from the ERA-EDTA Registry, and Fiona Loud from Kidney Care UK.

The 2017 European Kidney Forum, in alignment with the launch of the EU funded EDITH pilot project (the “Effect of Differing Kidney Disease Treatment Modalities and Organ Donation and Transplantation Practices on Health Expenditure and Patient Outcomes”), brought about discussions on the importance of patient-centred decision making, the health economic factors behind treatment choice and how to address health inequalities across Europe and improve access to care. This edition of the European Kidney Forum also provided a platform to present the results of EKHA’s multi-country survey, which provides a snapshot of Renal Patient Choice in Europe. MEP Hilde Vautmans opening address highlighted the European Parliament’s role in facilitating and ensuring equality in the availability of treatment options and access to care, regardless of geography.

Hosted by the MEP Group for Kidney Health, the 2016 edition of the European Kidney Forum “Moving from Disease Care to Health Care – A paradigm shift that focuses on Prevention” took place on the 19th April 2016 at the EU Thon Hotel in Brussels.

In the first edition of the 2015 European Kidney Forum, European kidney stakeholders gathered to share experiences and discuss the burden of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), its sustainable management whilst assuring patients receive quality care. The European Kidney Forum launched in context of the upcoming EU initiative on chronic diseases, the launch of an MEP interest group on access to healthcare and promising developments in the field of the European Reference Networks. Following presentations, it was agreed that there was significant opportunities for improvement in disease prevention strategies and early detection programmes and that Europe has a role to play. The European Commission’s DG Sante, Albrecht Werner confirmed the Commission’s willingness to take a greater stance on prevention and cooperate with stakeholders in this field. To this end, EKHA contributed to the EU Action on Chronic Diseases through the European Chronic Disease Alliance and disseminated Recommendations for Sustainable Kidney Care amongst policy makers and health stakeholders to influence the EU policy on behalf of European kidney patients. Host MEP Karin Kadenbach and chair of MEP Group for Kidney Health committed to maximizing activities within the European Parliament to reinforce the support of the kidney health cause within the institutions.