Young Lions Health Parliament
A think-tank of young professionals in Germany
What are the future opportunities for a better healthcare in Germany? The Young Lions (YL) Health Parliament is a platform for 80 young professionals to brainstorm about the possibilities for a sustainable health care system. The platform has started the first time in the year 2012 for two years – in the year 2016 the second period ends.
With its division into a parliament, presidium and committees, the YL Health Parliament reflects the structure of the German “Bundestag”. The current five committees are:
- Organization - Where, how and why must the health system's set-up be changed in order to guarantee optimal access and medical care for patients?
- Demographics - What parts of the health system are sensitive to demographic influences (financial sociological, medical, organizational aspects) and what could a possible remedy look like?
- Communication - What can be done to improve public communication concerning the health system with respect to contents, structure and media?
- Capacity to Compete - From the patient's perspective, for which of the health system's components have other countries found better solutions and how can these solutions be incorporated into the German health system?
- Urgent problems - From the patient's perspective, what are the most urgent problems in the health care system and how can they be solved?
The aim of the parliament is not always to find totally new ideas, but to support, discuss and extend innovations for future use. Due to a shortage of time, the committees have to specify their ideas to discuss the matter in detail. The slogan is to be a qualified provocateur. It means to discuss the ideas in public and with stakeholder, the more content and arguments you have to bring forward. Reality checks by experienced stakeholders and politicians are important to make a reality check. The results of the parliament can be divers - like presenting research work, bringing ideas forward or discussing topics with politicians. In the end, 80 young people have the opportunity to discuss future solutions for a sustainable health care system in a free environment without prejudging their ideas. Being part of a health care parliament means debating, research work and having fun. One of the most important learnings was, that (even for the Generation Y) digital communication is a good tool but the best efforts were made in face-to-face meetings. The results of the second period will be finally discussed in February 2016.
Disclosure: The Young Lions (YL) Health Parliament is an initiative started by Janssen Germany – Janssen has no impact on the content of the parliament.
Prof. Dr. David Matusiewicz, Vice President, Young Lions Health Parliament, Duesseldorf, Germany
15.04.2016
