Partnerships and External Affairs roundup 2025

Over the year, we have delivered a series of engagement activities with our partners that centre voices of people with lived experience.

Citizens’ Rights and Young People
Over the past year, we have continued to increase the ALLIANCE’s engagement on citizens’ rights and young people through European engagement. We have also spotlighted the social determinants of health by advocating for frictionless trade of Scottish agricultural products, which lessens food prices. Through the Scottish Advisory Forum on Europe (SAFE) and the UK Domestic Advisory Group on the TCA, we have delivered tangible impact and strengthened Scotland’s third sector voice in UK-EU dialogue, ensuring that social determinants of health, such as access to cheap food, remain central to policy decisions. SAFE now has over 50 member organisations from various sectors across Scotland, which regularly provide opportunities to shape discussions on trade, mobility, and citizens’ rights.

A major achievement has been the success of our ‘Youth Participation’ campaign developed in partnership with young ALLIANCE members and civil society organisations from across Scotland. The campaign’s policy leaflet set out young people’s priorities, which are to re-engage with Erasmus+ and an EU-UK Youth Mobility Scheme. This was shared with policymakers in the UK Government, Scottish Government, parliamentarians in Westminster and Holyrood, as well as partners in Brussels. The leaflet spotlighted youth voices and positioned young people as the way forward for greater cross-border collaboration.

We have spent the year empowering young ALLIANCE members with opportunities to contribute to high-level policy discussions, on panels at high-profile events across the UK and Europe, and we organised a delegation to attend the UK-EU Youth Dialogue 2025 event in Newcastle.

Medicines and Health Engagement
The Strategic Partnerships, External Affairs and Outreach Team, over the past year, has strengthened its partnerships across health and social care, ensuring that the perspectives of third sector organisations and people with lived experience continue to shape how health services—with patient safety at the heart—are designed and delivered in Scotland.

In collaboration with Public Health Scotland, we hosted engagement sessions ahead of the winter vaccination rollout, gathering insights from third sector organisations. A follow-up session was held in November, which captured lessons learned and opportunities for improvement in future vaccination programmes.

We also contributed the voice of our membership to the Scottish Government’s consultation on Polypharmacy Guidance. We facilitated and chaired two engagement sessions—one with people with lived experience and another with third sector partners—to inform our response. These discussions were collated into a formal report and also helped to inform our ongoing work with the Scottish Government’s Effective Prescribing Team.

Dr Irene Oldfather continued to represent the ALLIANCE’s national and international voice, delivering the keynote speech at the Nordic Social Pharmacy Conference, speaking at the Mackay Hannah Conference on Mental Health Report, and serving on the Advisory Committee for the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland. Across these platforms, she emphasised the importance of embedding human rights, patient voices, and lived experience.

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