How did your studies go?
I was from Maastricht, so I had to make new friends. And I did. I even met my husband, Peter Atanasov, during my time at HEPL! So, my marks were not that great in the first period… As I felt that I was not ready yet for the world of work, I decided I wanted to do two internships. Before giving me the go-ahead, Marco Varkevisser asked me to justify the extra taxpayers’ money this would involve. That was quite a challenge. Eventually, I did an internship with the United Nations Development Program in Slovakia and wrote my thesis at the Council for Public Health and Society.
What career path did you take after completing your studies?
After HEPL, I moved to London with Peter. While there, I worked for PPL, a small consultancy firm that focuses on health care and social and community care. I spent two years working for various clients, like health care procurers, local authorities, hospitals and home care organisations. It gave me a unique opportunity to take a look behind the scenes in all these organisations. As a result, I am familiar with many health care stakeholders. This is an advantage to this very day when I am writing policy advice.
After two years in London, we felt it was getting too crowded, too big and too expensive, so we moved to Barcelona. I started to work at the European University Hospital Alliance (EUHA) there in 2018. The EUHA brings together ten of Europe’s leading university hospitals (including Erasmus MC) with the aim of keeping health care future-proof and of the highest quality possible through knowledge sharing, innovation and policy influencing at the European level. We conduct research projects together (which are often very implementation-oriented) and also advise the European Union, because more and more EU laws are having an impact on health care. As the only staff member, I played a major role in setting up the organisation together with the members’ representatives. Two permanent colleagues joined me this year, one of whom is a secretary-general who represents us in Brussels. However, the network as a whole consists of more than 250 people from the EUHA hospitals.
The network’s main theme is the sustainability of health care systems. One aspect of this is the inability to solve staff shortages just by retaining or recruiting people. We need to redesign care and also focus on prevention more.
Finally, what has HEPL done for you?
The best gift it gave me is our ‘HEPL baby’ Niya! Also, thanks to HEPL and my work experience to date, I have a good understanding of how health care systems work in different countries. I am happy with my career so far. My current job has some great perks. For example, working with leading scholars like Ernst Kuipers and preparing meetings with the European Commission.
