The importance of effective access to healthcare for migrants is further reinforced by the new provisions on access to healthcare for applicants for and beneficiaries of international protection according to the legislations adopted under the Pact on Asylum and Migration in 2024, namely the revised Reception Conditions Directive and the Qualification Regulation.
However, access to healthcare also requires migrants to receive proper information about their rights via appropriate outreach tools. Member States have made efforts to improve the availability of information to migrants on their right to access healthcare according to the laws and rules of the specific country of stay, via the use of web portals in multiple languages and booklets but more efforts are still needed. These issues are further accentuated for migrant women who face additional challenges as they tend on average to have lower proficiency in the host country language, weaker social networks, lower educational and economic levels, and greater responsibilities for childcare and family. Migrant women also have specific needs for which they require additional attention, such as prenatal, delivery and post-natal healthcare for migrant mothers as well as preventive healthcare, screening and management of noncommunicable diseases such as cancer or cardiovascular diseases.

Specific attention should also be put on access to mental health and psychosocial support, where lack of awareness together with taboos often contribute to lower access compared to regular healthcare. Efforts are needed to further improve the access to information on sexual and reproductive healthcare and prevention for both men and women, especially among younger population and unaccompanied minors.

The projects should look into tools and methods to improve the awareness of migrants on rights and possibilities to access healthcare according to the laws and rules of the specific country of stay as well as their understanding of healthcare system. The objective is to ensure that migrants can effectively integrate into the existing healthcare systems, rather than necessitating changes to the systems themselves. This should take into consideration the specific obstacles faced by migrants to access healthcare and the specific situations of the various profiles of migrants, including reasons to migrate, migration status, gender, age and other specific needs. They should look at good practices and materials produced by previous projects in the field to ensure their adequate dissemination to organisation and staff in contact with migrants, ensuring these projects can reach their full benefits.

Proposals should include one or more of the following activities (non-exhaustive list):

• Activities to increase the awareness of migrants about their healthcare-related rights and opportunities, including outreach activities for vulnerable groups, e.g. migrants with low educational attainment, isolated migrants, migrants with specific needs, elderly. This also includes activities specifically addressed to increase the awareness of migrant women about their healthcare-related rights and opportunities, as well as activities specifically aimed at increasing the awareness of migrants on healthcare, mental healthcare, and prevention and sexual and reproductive healthcare especially for young migrants and unaccompanied minors in transition to adulthood (including through mentoring). Such activities should reflect on the use of community healthcare models, intercultural mediators, partnerships between NGOs, migrant-led organisations and healthcare providers and the use of IT tools and innovative approaches should be proposed when possible.
• Activities to co-design healthcare related integration support measures with migrants, with migrant women and organisations representing their interests.
• Trainings workshops, mutual learning and awareness-raising activities to raise awareness among public officials, including policy makers, and professionals (e.g. authorities in charge of integration support measures and healthcare authorities and professionals) of the specific needs and situation of migrants and migrant women in accessing healthcare.
• Conferences, workshops and mutual learning activities aimed at exchanging experience and disseminating good practices in relation to effective access to healthcare for migrants in general and migrant women in particular among policy makers and integration support providers. Proposed activities should take into account the diversity of healthcare providers, not just hospital and medical centres, but also private healthcare professionals. Studies on the overall access to healthcare by migrants are not needed. Proposed activities to be developed in order to improve access to information should take into account the training material already developed under projects funded by the Commission such as those provided in the EU Health Policy Platform to avoid any overlap.

The target groups of this topic are as follows:

• Migrants as defined for this call;
• Particular attention should be paid to migrant women, including mothers and women with vulnerabilities, elderly migrants and to young migrant adults, including unaccompanied minors;
• Public officials and professionals of the healthcare sector and of local and regional authorities and organisations.

Additional considerations applicable to this topic

• Applicants are invited to take note of, avoid duplication with, and build on projects previously funded by the EU in relation to integration.
• To increase the impact of their actions, applicants should pay attention to involving all relevant actors in a multi-stakeholder partnerships approach (e.g. local and regional authorities; public and private service providers, especially healthcare providers; social and economic partners; employers; civil society, including migrant-led organisations etc.).
• Applicants are recommended to involve the target group (migrants in their diversity) in the design of the proposals, in the implementation and evaluation of the project. The project proposals should specify how such involvement has been or will be carried out.
• The involvement of migrant-led organisations in the proposed consortium either as applicants, partners or in a different way will be considered as particularly relevant.
• The Commission welcomes:
  • Proposals with broad geographical scope, engaging applicants from diverse regions across the EU;
  • Proposals involving applicants from more Member States than the minimum number identified in the eligibility criteria, as long as they are relevant for the design of the action;
  • Partnerships between partners with different expertise and experience on migrant integration, so that synergies can be found, for example between local and more global partners, and less-experienced partners can benefit from the knowledge of the more experienced.
• Letters of support are not requested for the application and will be disregarded during the evaluation phase.