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The project HARBOR – Healthcare Access in Rural Border Regions. Realizing Patient Rights Across European Borders – is the first cross-national and multi-scalar study of cross-border interactions and their impact on access to healthcare in rural and disadvantaged border areas in Europe (Norway/Sweden and France/Belgium). The project will help social and health policy scholars as well as policymakers to better understand the mechanisms and processes that foster or hamper the realization of timely and affordable healthcare in rural and disadvantaged areas and will open new avenues for rethinking borders as new potential for interconnected and coordinated health regions. The COVID-19 crisis has indeed demonstrated that borders are still very much a physical reality but also that cross-border initiatives, when applied effectively, have the potential to benefit patients.

The project seeks to contribute to multi-level comparative policy research between Nordic and continental welfare states, identify mechanisms for pooling of healthcare resources in a territorially diverse Europe and generate recommendations for health policy cooperation in the EU and across border regions.

HARBOR will also innovate with a bottom-up comparative study of how cross-border interactions affect access to care in border regions, mapping interactions and health services on a given territory, including ambulatory and primary care which are a crucial part of improving access to health care services in rural or disadvantaged areas. Cross-border eHealth will be investigated as a key element for the interoperability of health systems, but also as a toolbox for local collaborations.