Tuscany Regional Health Agency's projects and collaborations: EU international research

Over the last years the Tuscany Regional Health Agency (ARS) has significantly expanded its access to external funding for research, also thanks to the growing opportunities represented by European tenders. In particular, the European Commission, besides pure research, encourages different activities such as the exchange of good practices, the transferability of models of excellence and the impact evaluation for policies and interventions, aiming to increase population health status and quality of life through public policies increasingly oriented towards efficiency and sustainability.

The continuous updating on European policies and on calls published by the EU has favored the growth of ARS international research and significantly helped in finding the most appropriate collaboration opportunities according to the regional strategic lines.

The Agency's international collaborations, both in the context of EU-funded projects and in the context of collaborative research and pharmaco-epidemiology networks (such as ENCePP European Network of Centres for Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacovigilance and VCAC4EU - Vaccine monitoring Collaboration for Europe association) have thus increased significantly. In particular, the emergence and spread of the Covid 19 pandemic made it necessary to carry out timely preliminary studies for vaccines authorization and specific post-authorization studies, most of them currently participated by ARS.

Today ARS collaborates in a significant number of international research projects and seeks the creation and implementation of synergies with the best national and international research networks.