EAN 2023 | Update on the Stroke Action Plan for Europe

The Action Plan for Stroke in Europe is a flagship project of the European Stroke Organization and it is said to be the largest stroke project ever in Europe. It’s a policy project that was developed in collaboration between ESO, the European Stroke Organization, and SAFE, which is the organization of patients and patient representatives in Europe. It aims to improve stroke care, reduce the burden of stroke in Europe. It has four overarching targets by 2030: to reduce the burden of stroke by 10%, to ensure that all stroke patients go directly to stroke unit care, to ensure proper primary prevention of stroke. So, these are the overarching targets. Based on that, we have set up a system where we have national coordinators and we have activity in 46 out of the 52 WHO European countries.

In each of these countries we have one, two, or in some countries three national coordinators. We want to have both health care professionals and patient representatives involved in this. So basically, we want to have one from the health care professionals and one from the patient side. They organize things in the country. What are they organizing? They’re working to get fully funded and implemented national stroke plans, because having that is the best way to ensure that all patients have access to the best care, and that the country provides its citizens with best possible efficient, multi-sectorial health interventions to prevent stroke.

The new thing we have done, or rather launched, is the Stroke Service Tracker. The Stroke Service Tracker is a pan-European quality database based on summary data from the participating countries. And so far, now I’m a little bit in doubt whether it’s 36 or 37 countries that are participating. They are, on an annual basis, uploading basic data on numbers of stroke together with data on their pathways, do they have pre-hospital notification and things like that. And then our KPIs are 12 key performance indicators covering the entire chain of stroke care, going from primary prevention to life after stroke, where we have identified a crucial item which is also accountable. And that could be having a national stroke plan, and another one is the rate of access to reperfusion therapy. Then we annually publish on our website the results so that countries can compare within countries, (and ask) “are we doing better than last year?” and compare to their neighbors. I’m from Denmark and if we see that people in Sweden are doing better than us then something happens. I mean, our politicians can’t live with that. So, comparing to your neighbors is one of the best ways to go forward, because it puts things into perspective. These are published as colored maps so that it’s not just for health care professionals to interpret it, it’s something that you can intuitively understand. Is it red, green, or is it yellow? As it should be, not at all as it should be, or on the way? So, this is basically a policy project and we’re working to support countries in improving stroke care.