Bursaries

Target group – general selection criteria for bursaries

The program is focused on patients who

  • have personal experience with Lupus or RAand work and are involved as volunteers working for fellow patients;
  • have rarely had the opportunity to attend an international rheumatology conference or who have attended some conferences and are keen to learn more on the topics featured in the EiR patient program for 2012;
  • have a good understanding of the English language so that they can take advantage of the whole experience, scientific sessions and any joint sessions there are;
  • are interested to learn ways of coping with the many problems that come with the illness and who are expected to contribute and to participate pro-actively;
  • feel responsible to learn ways of sharing this information with fellow patientsproperly and with intelligence.

More specifically the patient profile for the recruitment and selection of participants is the following:

  • Must be able to communicate well in English
  • Is in a position to feed back to a wider audience post conference, through local support groups, local hospital education session etc
  • Is interested in patient education/self management strategies
  • Has links to a national patient group to feedback to
  • Could get media coverage in home country about attending the conference, even if only in local press/radio

Selection procedure for people with RA

  • Candidates will be recruited through the RA patient organisations of eight European countries. They will be invited to nominate potential candidates.
  • There will be three patient delegates per country;
  • For 2012 candidates are invited from France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Spain (n=4) and UK;
  • Countries may rotate from year to year.

Selection procedure for people with Lupus

  • Announcements will be sent to 23 groups (21 countries) within Lupus Europe to invite organisations to nominate potential candidates.
  • One person from all the Lupus Europe member countries will be identified.

Bursaries

There will be 50 bursaries in total, 25 for Lupus patients and 25 for RA. The following services will be included:

  • Economy class tickets from country of origin to Madrid
  • 3 nights’ accommodation to Madrid for the duration of the Patients’ Meeting and EiR
  • Registration to attend the Patients’ Meeting and EiR
  • All invited speakers and coordinators of the Patients’ Meeting will be entitled to free registration, economy class round trip air tickets, three nights accommodation in Madrid and airport-hotel transfers in Madrid.

For submitting your application, please click here

Deadline for bursary applications is 15 October, 2011.