The Commission has launched the fifth edition of the EU Health Prize for Journalists. This award aims to reward high quality items contributing to better information on health, care and patients’ rights issues.

Journalists who want to be candidate may submit their contributions online until 30 September 2013. Journalists from all EU countries can apply as well as those from Croatia, because of its accession to the EU on 1 July.

Themes

The themes of this year’s prize are preventing illness, healthcare, health systems and patients’ rights. The specific topics are:
– cross border healthcare
– rare diseases
– organ donation and transplantation
– health workforce
– patient safety and hospital acquired infections
– chronic diseases: cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes
– flu vaccination and childhood vaccination
– prudent use of antibiotics
– ageing and dementias
– active and healthy ageing
– pharmaceuticals
– health determinants: tobacco, alcohol and nutrition & physical activity

Prizes

Awards will be given for first, second and third place, with prizes of €6,500, €4,000 and €2,500 respectively.

Selecting and awarding the winners

In each EU country, a national jury composed of journalists and public health experts, chaired by the European Commission, will select one national finalist. An EU jury will then select three EU level winners among the 28 finalists. The 28 finalists will be invited to Brussels at the beginning of 2014 for the award giving.

The rules

Participants to the competition must be nationals or residents of one of the 28 EU Member States and aged 18 or over.

A maximum of 2 articles can be submitted per participant and team submissions are accepted as long as the team does not exceed 5 people.

All articles must be in one of the official languages of the EU and have been originally published in either a print or online media outlet between 1 August 2012 and 30 September 2013.

The maximum length of the article should not exceed 20,000 characters (including spaces).

More rules and conditions can be found on the dedicated website.