The Evidence Is Here. What is next?
ECDC’s latest report celebrates good practice in migrant health. The next challenge is turning evidence into lasting investment.
On 29 September 2026, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) released an important report, From Evidence to Practice: Successful Models for Improved Testing, Linkage to and Retention in Care for Migrant Populations, Related to HIV, TB, Viral Hepatitis and STIs in the EU/EEA.
For organisations working at the intersection of public health, migration, community engagement and health equity, this is a significant moment. It is an opportunity to celebrate the work being done across Europe, recognise the value of community-led approaches, and ask a fundamental question: If we increasingly understand what works, why is sustained investment in community-led health interventions still such a challenge?
The report brings together 37 models from 14 EU/EEA countries, with 23 identified as best practice in at least one evaluation domain. These models address different stages of the care cascade, from testing and linkage to care to retention in services. Collectively, they offer valuable insights into how health services can better respond to the needs and circumstances of migrant populations.
Recognition for community-led approaches
Among the models featured is ours! Noaks Ark Mosaik’s HIV Response in southern Sweden. This recognition is an important milestone for our organisation, our peer workers, partners and the communities with whom we work. Our approach combines multilingual health education, rapid HIV and STI testing, psychosocial support, community outreach and assistance with referral and continued engagement in care. We deliver activities in familiar community settings, including language schools, cultural events, religious centres and community gatherings.
Through partnerships and the EU-funded CORE project, our testing interventions have expanded beyond HIV to include hepatitis B, hepatitis C and syphilis. This integrated approach seeks to make testing more accessible, culturally responsive and connected to the wider continuum of care. At the heart of our work is a simple principle: health services are more accessible when communities are engaged as partners, trust is cultivated, and interventions respond to people’s lived realities. For people experiencing language barriers, stigma, limited health literacy or unfamiliarity with healthcare systems, the presence of trusted community organisations can help bridge the gap between services that technically exist and services that people feel able and confident to use.
The ECDC report’s inclusion of our model acknowledges the importance of these community-based approaches and the collective efforts required to make them work. The evidence is encouraging. The funding question remains. Celebration, however, should not be the end of the conversation. Community-based organisations are often expected to reach populations that mainstream services struggle to engage, build trust, adapt interventions to different cultural contexts, facilitate referrals and support people beyond the initial testing encounter. These responsibilities require skilled personnel, strong partnerships, reliable systems and a sustained presence within communities. Yet project-based financing can make continuity difficult. When funding cycles end, experienced staff may leave, established relationships can weaken, and promising approaches risk being reduced or discontinued.
The ECDC report highlights the importance of system integration, stable funding mechanisms and long-term financing for effective models. It also identifies gaps in monitoring, evaluation and cost data that can make comparisons, planning and sustainability more difficult. The implication is clear: documenting good practice is essential, but documentation alone cannot sustain it. Can we genuinely claim to prioritise health equity if we recognise effective community-led approaches but fail to finance the conditions that allow them to continue?
From recognition to public health infrastructure
Community-led health services should not be viewed merely as temporary projects or supplementary activities. When appropriately evaluated and connected to health systems, they can contribute to more accessible, person-centred and responsive public health services. This requires action on several fronts, where policymakers must create financing arrangements that support continuity, not only short-term outputs. Health authorities and civil society organisations must continue strengthening collaboration, with migrant communities meaningfully involved in designing, implementing and evaluating the services intended for them.
Also, investment in monitoring and evaluation is equally important. Community-led work deserves credible evidence of reach, effectiveness, costs, acceptability and sustainability. Such evidence can help organisations improve their services, support responsible replication and inform decisions about longer-term public investment which the European CDC has done in evaluating our model. Above all, migrant communities must be recognised as partners in public health, not simply as target populations. Their experiences, priorities and knowledge are essential to developing services that are accessible, respectful and responsive to real needs.
A celebration, and a call to action
At Noaks Ark Mosaik, we welcome this important contribution to the European public health conversation. The ECDC report brings practical experience into focus and reinforces the role of tailored, integrated and community-based approaches in improving testing, linkage to care and retention in services for migrant populations.
We celebrate this recognition with gratitude to our staff, peer workers, partners and community members whose commitment, collaboration and trust make this work possible. However, the next chapter must be about more than recognition. The real measure of success will be whether evidence translates into sustained investment, stronger partnerships, institutional commitment and equitable access to care. Europe has taken an important step in documenting good practice. Now, policymakers, health systems and funders must help ensure that these approaches can endure, grow responsibly and reach the people who need them. Because public health progress is not only about discovering effective approaches. It is also about having the collective will to sustain them.
Evidence has opened the door. Sustainable action must carry us through it.
