Croí CEO receives European award for work with heart patients

THE CEO of heart and stroke charity Croí has been announced as the inaugural winner of a prestigious international Hall of Fame Award for his work in international patient advocacy and engagement.

The award was presented to Neil Johnson at the Patient Engagement Open Forum Annual Conference in Milan, Italy, an annual meeting of global patient organisations, industry, health technology assessment specialists and other stakeholders across multiple disease areas.

The awards programme is a collaboration between the European Patients' Forum (EPF), the European Patients' Academy on Therapeutic Innovation (EUPATI) and the Patient Focused Medicines Development Initiative (PFMD).

Neil Johnson received his award for unwavering dedication and remarkable contributions to patient engagement and advocacy over the last three decades which have made a profound impact on the lives of countless individuals.

He is recognised for his leadership of the heart and stroke charity Croí for the past 30 years, the founding of the National Institute for Prevention and Cardiovascular Health (Ireland) in 2014, and the founding of the Global Heart Hub in 2019 (the first international alliance of heart patient organisations).

Since setting up the Global Heart Hub, the alliance has just been joined by its 100th international patient organisation affiliate and collectively the network represents over 2.5m heart patients from across the world.