Dear Reader,
Invest4Health is a Horizon Europe project aimed at transforming the way we fund health promotion and disease prevention. We argue that treating these efforts as smart investments in people’s long-term well-being, rather than costs, can lead to stronger and more sustainable health systems.
We aim to shift thinking by developing innovative investment models that support shared risk, pooled resources, and better outcomes. For this, the consortium is working closely with eight regional testbeds to co-develop and test SCI-compatible business and finance models.
After launching with four testbeds, Galicia (Spain), North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), Skåne (Sweden), and West Wales (UK), we expanded the project this spring through a successful open call. Four new testbeds have now joined from Portugal, Sweden, Serbia, and Italy. The new sites are currently participating in our Competence Building Programme, which helps local teams with stakeholder engagement, systems thinking, and designing smart, capacitating investment pathways.
Our goal is to create scalable solutions that address real-life health challenges and are ready for broader uptake through social franchising. We have also established a Citizen Patient Advisory Group to ensure that public and patient voices are meaningfully included in the development of investment models, helping to align them with real community needs and experiences.
We hope you find the content of this newsletter valuable and insightful. Thank you for reading.
The Invest4Health Team
A NEW INTEGRATIVE APPROACH
TO PREVENTION AND SYSTEM-LEVEL CHANGE
TRANSDISCIPLINARY HEALTH ECONOMICS:
A VISION FOR 2050 AND THE ROLE OF INVEST4HEALTH
Professor Rhiannon Tudor Edwards, a key partner in the Invest4Health (I4H) project, representing Bangor University, proposes a significant shift in health economics from a narrow focus on healthcare services to a more “transdisciplinary” approach, in a forward-looking editorial published in the Global Health Economics and Sustainability journal.
Edwards calls for an integrative collaboration across economics, public health, climate science, and the social sciences to address our most pressing health challenges. These include climate change, growing health inequalities, the impacts of unhealthy food systems, and rising obesity.
The editorial emphasises that prevention remains seriously underfunded across Europe, despite strong evidence of its long-term benefits. Rhiannon Tudor Edwards argues that to address these complex challenges, we need to move beyond small-scale cost-effectiveness studies. Instead, we should focus on broader, system-level modelling and cross-sector collaboration, supported by new and innovative ways of financing.
This vision closely matches the goals of the Invest4Health project. I4H aims to test and develop new financial models for funding health promotion and disease prevention, particularly at the local level.
Through the project, Edwards and her I4H colleagues co-develop Smart Capacitating Investment (SCI) models, practical tools for financing sustainable, community-based health solutions. The project brings together experts from economics, public health, policy, and finance, and is grounded in real-world testbeds. These models are designed to be scalable through a social franchising approach. Citizen and patient voices also play an essential role in shaping this work.
I4H TESTBEDS
SUPPORTING LOCAL PUBLIC HEALTH SOLUTIONS
WEST WALES TESTBED TRANSFORMS DIABETES PREVENTION BY RETHINKING PUBLIC HEALTH INVESTMENT
I4H Workshop in the West Wales Invest4Health testbed led by Hywel Dda University Health Board
Hywel Dda University Health Board (HDUHB) has been actively participating in the Invest4Health project as a testbed since the start of the project. I4H aligns with their goal of developing sustainable models that prioritise preventive health measures, shifting focus from reactive treatment to proactive, long-term well-being.
The Wales testbed focuses on diabetes prevention, a pressing issue in Wales with rising type 2 diabetes cases. They are tackling this public health issue through early intervention. The Health Board is exploring new pathways to engage patients in being more active through a Social Prescribing program.
The program is being used to promote healthier lifestyles through physical activity and nutrition programmes to improve early identification of pre-diabetes through community outreach and primary care. It is also about addressing social determinants of health like food insecurity and low health literacy, which increase diabetes risk.
By integrating these efforts into the broader Invest4Health model, Hywel Dda aims to demonstrate how targeted, preventive investment can reduce long-term NHS costs while improving health outcomes across the population.
I4H COMPETENCE BUILDING PROGRAMME
FOUR NEW TESTBEDS HAVE JOINED THE TRAINING PROGRAMME
I4H Competence Building Programme overview
Following a successful Open Call in early 2025, four new regional testbeds have joined the Invest4Health (I4H) project: Lazio (Italy), Lisbon (Portugal), Belgrade (Serbia), and Region Jönköping (Sweden). These regions bring fresh perspectives and local expertise to the consortium and are now working alongside existing testbeds in Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the UK, committed to exploring innovative, sustainable ways to finance better health through prevention and health promotion.
The training programme
To help the new regions integrate and apply the I4H approach, the project launched a structured Competence Building Programme, coordinated by IESE Business School. This eight-session training journey is designed to build practical knowledge around Smart Capacitating Investment (SCI) and support testbeds in developing their own locally grounded strategies.
Since May 2025, the new testbeds have participated in several interactive workshops, covering essential topics such as defining and analysing local health challenges, identifying and mapping key stakeholders, drafting value propositions, and building trust-based engagement strategies for stakeholders. Each session has blended expert input, exercises, and peer learning to ensure relevance to each region’s context.
What’s next
The next phase of the training, starting after the summer break, will continue to work with more advanced topics, including exploring investment pathways and financing tools and designing sustainable business and delivery models.
By the end of the programme, each region will be equipped with a well-defined approach to SCI, grounded in real-world needs and shaped through ongoing collaboration with key local actors.
CITIZEN PATIENT INVOLVEMENT IN
HEALTH-RELATED DECISIONS
I4H CITIZEN PATIENT ADVISORY GROUP
IS IN ACTION
We have established a Citizen Patient Advisory Group (CPAG) to ensure that public voices are heard both at the project level and locally. Its eleven members were selected through an open call and interviews. The group helps us understand the real-world impact of our project and provides advice on how to make health financing more effective and fair by also involving citizens’ views.
Activities
CPAG is now actively engaged in several areas of the project, like contributing to the competence-building programme for the new testbeds, creating lay summaries of concepts or reports, shaping the co-governance platform for citizen participation, and representing CPAG and the project at the European Public Health Conference.
Our goals
What we want to achieve is that the Citizen Patient Advisory Group becomes more than a consultative body for Invest4Health. We want CPAG to become an essential part of how Invest4Health places the voices and perspectives of both the general public and patients at the centre of innovation in health financing.
Their insights shape how we define priorities, design tools, and deliver outputs and outcomes that are not only technically sound but user-friendly, socially relevant and inclusive.
I4H FINAL CONFERENCE – 28 MAY 2026, BRUSSELS
SAVE THE DATE!
SMART CAPACITATING INVESTMENTS
FOR HEALTH PROMOTION AND DISEASE PREVENTION
While much work still lies ahead for our consortium, including ongoing training, local testing, refinement of models, and the synthesis of key insights in a White Paper, the Invest4Health project has entered its final year. Amidst this intensive activity, preparations for the final conference are already underway, with the main themes and strategic direction beginning to take shape.
A high-level final conference is planned in Brussels on 28 May 2026. This event will bring together European and national stakeholders to explore how Smart Capacitating Investment (SCI) can reshape the way we finance health promotion and disease prevention. We’ll share key results from our eight regional testbeds, highlight innovative business and finance models, and launch our joint White Paper featuring key learnings, insights, and recommendations.
Join us to discover how prevention can be a smart investment and how we can scale these approaches across Europe to build more sustainable, equitable health systems.
Save the date — more details coming soon!
PROJECT RESOURCES SCIENTIFIC
PUBLICATIONS – MID-TERM REPORT – SCI REPOSITORY
For those interested in learning more, we invite you to explore Project Resources available on our website. They provide valuable insights into our work, including an overview of Invest4Health, project deliverables on research on Smart Capacitating Investments, materials from our Mid-Term Workshop, or our latest scientific publications.
(Image by freepik)
CONSORTIUM
Our consortium consists of 22 partners from 11 countries.
The partnership has eight testbeds representing various health systems:
Galicia in Spain, West Wales in the UK, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, Lazio in Italy, Lisbon in Portugal, Region Skåne and Jönköping in Sweden, and Belgrade in Serbia.
