Who We Are

CEE Ahead is an independent, non-partisan initiative promoting high quality healthcare solutions for Central and Eastern Europe.

The Stockholm Network acts as the initiative’s secretariat, seeking to collaborate and debate with local health system stakeholders. We actively promote dialogue between healthcare professionals, patient groups, academia and the think tank world. Our activities include topical publications and policy-related public events in the region.

Our objective is to enable a broad and informed debate about better ways to deliver and finance sustainable healthcare in Europe. As a pan-European think tank and network, with member organisations in 37 countries, the Stockholm Network will also use cross-country comparisons and seek to highlight best practice in these areas, looking at examples from all parts of the world, where they may be relevant to the current policy debate.

We seek an open-minded debate with everyone with an interest in the field. We do, however, believe that financial incentives generally work better than government directives; that there need not be a conflict between economic efficiency and universal access to health care; that healthcare systems should be able to adapt to patients’ diverse and constantly changing needs; and that institutional diversity and autonomy of providers enables a learning process for the best way to deliver healthcare.

Disagreements on how to translate these broad objectives into policy are legitimate and welcomed. What is important is that we have a debate that is driven by long-term visions of better healthcare and in the interests of high-quality and safe patient care.