EACH was entered into the UK Register of Charities on 3 November 2014 as a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO). The aim of the CIO is the relief of sickness and the preservation of health of patients for the public benefit by the promotion of effective evidence-based patient-centred healthcare communication between patients, relatives and healthcare practitioners throughout the world.

Registered charity number

Registered charity number 1159050. Click here to view details held by the UK Charity Commission and here to read our constitution. Click here to view EACH’s charity registration certificate.

How we achieve our charitable aim

In our charitable application, we have stated that we will achieve our aim by:

• promoting the development of healthcare communication research and education to improve the quality of communication in healthcare in globally and hence improve the health outcomes of the general public
• enabling the exchange and dissemination of products of teaching and research within the community of healthcare communication researchers and teachers, to enhance the quality of communication in healthcare and thereby improve patients’ and relatives’ experience.
• more widely disseminating knowledge about effective communication between patients, relatives and health professionals, extolling best practices and improvements in education to comply with the changing needs of health delivery and increasing moves towards a person-centred approach incorporating shared responsibility and decision making.
• developing an active network of researchers, teachers and practitioners throughout the world, committed to improving the patient experience in the field of communication in healthcare

Trustees

All voting members of the Executive and Steering Committees are trustees of the charity.

Charitable donations to EACH

EACH: International Association for Communication in Healthcare was established in 2001 and has recently achieved charitable status. The charity’s purpose is “the relief of sickness and the preservation of health of patients by the promotion of effective evidence-based patient-centred healthcare communication between patients, relatives and healthcare practitioners throughout the world”. It achieves this through the following activities:

• promoting the development of healthcare communication research and education to improve the quality of communication in healthcare globally and hence improve the health outcomes of the general public
• enabling the exchange and dissemination of products of teaching and research within the community of healthcare communication researchers and teachers, to enhance the quality of communication in healthcare and thereby improve patients’ and relatives’ experience
• more widely disseminating knowledge about effective communication between patients, relatives and health professionals, extolling best practices and improvements in education to comply with the changing needs of health delivery and increasing moves towards a person-centred approach incorporating shared responsibility and decision making.
• developing an active network of researchers, teachers and practitioners throughout the world, committed to improving the patient experience in the field of communication in healthcare

We are currently seeking charitable donations to help us over the next 3 years deliver two highly interrelated and fundamental projects which will significantly help the vision of EACH to be accomplished:

1. The support and development of junior researchers in health care communication who will be the future leaders in our field.
   There is increasing worldwide interest in researching healthcare communication, in particular exploring the communication needs of patients and relatives as they progress through the healthcare system and discovering the skills required for healthcare practitioners to practice patient-centred communication in the modern world. EACH would therefore like to provide a system of comprehensive support and training for junior researchers of communication in healthcare through a series of workshops on research methodology and the provision of ongoing meetings of junior researchers to discuss their research needs. These would be facilitated by senior researchers from EACH and enable the future generation of healthcare communication researchers to develop and form a strong network to promulgate high quality communication research throughout the world.
2. The support and development of teaching of communication to healthcare professionals in countries who have more recently embraced the need for communication training
   Without training of health care professionals in communication, we cannot put the lessons from research into everyday practice and thereby benefit patients. The world is a very diverse community with different healthcare systems and educational provision for healthcare professionals. Many countries are now beginning to establish health care communication programmes from a relatively low starting point and require considerable help to push this agenda forwards. Freedom of movement of healthcare professionals who work in each other’s countries also dictates that the standard of healthcare communication education becomes more equal across countries. Patient populations have also become more diverse through migration: hence delivering adequate person centred care has become even more important and challenging. EACH would therefore like to provide an ongoing programme of “train the trainers” courses in undergraduate and postgraduate education in “starter” countries globally. These would be delivered by senior communication educationalists within EACH and be focused on specific countries, aiming to provide a network of healthcare communication trainers within each country who would form an ongoing self-sustainable community of communication trainers.

EACH is seeking charitable donations of €50,000 per year for three years to enable this vision to be accomplished. This initial statement aims to give a broad overview of our organisation and charitable needs. More detailed information about these projects and the financial requirements will be made available as required and face-to-face discussions will be needed to explore distinct projects to be supported by any individual donor.

Please contact the President by email.