The city of Porto, in Portugal, hosted a meeting of European countries, organized by ACSS, which debated the best methodologies to respond to the problem of attractiveness and retention of human resources in Health in Europe for two days. This meeting is part of the HEROES PROJECT, which aims to reinforce and improve planning in the area of health and human resources, and took place on the 21st and 22nd of November. In this project, Portugal, through ACSS, assumes leadership of one of the groups of countries and has Norway as a co-leader.

The meeting, which took the form of a workshop involving countries such as Norway, Italy, Spain, Greece, Sweden and Portugal, aims to improve the planning capacity of health human resources in Europe, to ensure accessibility, sustainability and the resilience of health services and systems. Other countries, like Hungary, Netherlands, and Slovénia, also made an important contribution to the results of the workshop by promoting cooperation between the participants and countries.  

This meeting had the merit of leading countries to “share common challenges and identify opportunities for improvement and collaboration”. This meeting promoted the debate for the next developments in the HEROES Project, like the definition of action strategies such as the urgent improvement of human resources databases; the development of more effective planning tools and methods, as well as training professionals with more and better skills.