Our Governance
Patient Advocacy & Engagement
The European Patient Advocacy Institute (EPAI), a spin-off from EUPATI, was established as a charitable, non-profit limited company in Germany in 2017. Acting as a patient-led institute, it aims to strengthen patient education, patient empowerment, patient involvement, public health as well as science and research.
As a German non-profit entity, EPAI operates selflessly and serves its statutory charitable purpose to promote science and research, public health, patient education and patient participation in medical R&D.
It does not pursue any economic purpose.
EPAI was founded by the patient advocate Jan Geissler and is run by a highly skilled team of patient advocates and project managers with years of experience in patient advocacy, patient engagement and NGOs.
To implement its projects successfully, EPAI taps into additional experience and resources of Patvocates, a patient-led think tank and social venture, as well as the knowledge, methods and tools of many non-profit initiatives world-wide.
While EPAI provides expertise, capacity and the legal platform to implement non-profit projects, it acts by the strict principle of subsidiarity: any decisions on governance, design, direction, content, vendors, partners and finances of the projects and secretariats are made by their patient-led steering boards or programme committees, not by the EPAI management.