Invest4Health: Rethinking How We Fund Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Invest4Health (I4H) is a Horizon Europe-funded project that brings together 22 partners, including eight regional testbeds, to rethink how we fund health promotion and disease prevention. In response to the long-standing problems of reactive healthcare funding, worsened by economic crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, and ageing populations, I4H offers a new approach: treating health, and, especially prevention, as a smart, long-term investment instead of just a cost.
Smart Capacitating Investments
At the heart of this vision is Smart Capacitating Investment (SCI). Through SCI, we are:
- Designing long-term, outcome-focused investment strategies
- Strengthening local capacity to test and scale innovative financing models
- Engaging stakeholders across public, private, and civil society sectors
- Involving citizens and patients to ensure meaningful, trusted solutions.
SCI is more than just a new way of financing; it also introduces co-governance frameworks for stakeholder engagement mechanisms. Stakeholders include citizens too to support sustainable health-promoting initiatives by integrating citizen and patient voices into investment decisions to improve trust, transparency, and impact. Invest4Health also employs a social franchising model to scale successful health solutions.
Through intensive collaboration with, for example, the public administration, public health professionals, policymakers, investors, community organisations and the public, the I4H testbeds are co-developing and testing practical, scalable business and financial models. These efforts aim to unlock new funding pathways for prevention and health promotion to build local capacities and deliver equitable health outcomes with long-term social and economic value.
Four New Regions Join Invest4Health
Following the successful conclusion of our Open Call on March 14, which attracted 17 applications, we are thrilled to welcome four new regional testbeds to the I4H community:
- Istituto Superiore di Sanità – Lazio, Italy
- National School of Public Health, NOVA University Lisbon – Lisbon, Portugal
- Health Tech Lab – Belgrade, Serbia
- Region of Jönköping County – Jönköping, Sweden
Uniquely, these new testbeds will have the chance to apply the project’s learnings during the project period, an opportunity that usually only comes post-project. They will work alongside our original testbeds in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), Galicia (Spain), Skåne (Sweden), and West Wales (UK), expanding our collective efforts to test and refine SCI-compatible financial and business models in real-world contexts. This work also feeds directly into our preparations for social franchising by helping identify and validate models that are scalable, replicable, and ready to be shared with other regions across Europe.
Competence Building Programme
To kick off this next phase, we launched the Invest4Health Competence Building Programme, with the first session held on 20 May. This tailored training programme combines interactive workshops, practical tools, and peer learning. By the end, each region will have a draft SCI initiative — a concrete step toward rethinking how we finance healthier futures.
The eight-session training programme runs through November 2025. It’s a hands-on learning experience where participants will:
- Understand the components of SCI and how to apply them
- Define local challenges, map stakeholders, and set measurable outcomes
- Explore investor engagement and financing options
- Design sustainable business models for health promotion.
Each testbed will complete the programme with a draft SCI initiative tailored to its regional context, ready for real-world implementation.
The Invest4Health testbeds and their local stakeholders are laying the foundation for a future where prevention and health promotion take priority, health investments are smarter, and systems are better equipped to deliver lasting impact.
Stay with us as we follow the progress of these dynamic regions, sharing insights and challenges along the way. We’re excited for what we can achieve together.
(Image by Freepik)
