With hate speech, low self-esteem, and misinformation circulating online, teenagers and adults must be aware of the risks online and ensure they can accept the risks before going online. Children and young people should be aware of how excessive screen time seriously impacts their psychological and emotional well-being. The solution to it could be:

• to create an evidence-based awareness campaign
• to introduce mandatory lessons within the school curriculum to raise awareness about screen time
• to enhance security of online activities: we need more verification when users create social media accounts to avoid lies about identity and age. All accounts creators should go through extensive checks. Even if the process is long and annoying, it comes down to protecting lives
• to limit the practice of online gaming. Video game apps should create a system where children under 13 years old have a limited online game by verification of age

Every citizen should be guaranteed a minimum level of healthcare, regardless of income or EU passport. We need to guarantee:

• fair and standardised pricing for drugs across Europe
• equal access to innovative treatments and life-saving drugs
• similar waiting times for operations and procedures
• equal and fair COVID-19 follow-up care, for everyone who contracted the disease

It has been a year of turmoil for our healthcare systems amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Wouldn't it be a great source of resilience to hold EU Member States to a certain standard of healthcare and help to fund this throughout the region in the case of future virus outbreaks? The EU needs a universal healthcare system with a shared budget, to which all Member States contribute. This budget should service equal wages for healthcare workers and an equal level of care for all European citizens.

We need more education about human rights in medicine: there are too many health professionals who refuse to care about LGBT+ patients and violate the rights of women in the postnatal period with malpractices such as the 'husband stitch', a medically unnecessary extra stitch after birth. In addition, a significant number of health practitioners still refuse the right to abortion or contraceptives. 

There are still countries in the EU where the consumption of Cannabis is considered a crime and people who use it are being persecuted. Union-wide decriminalisation of growing Cannabis for personal use would bring enormous benefits to the public mental health. 

Chronic disease makes young people extremely vulnerable and COVID-19 has exacerbated the problem, through disrupted access to healthcare, extreme caution around vaccination and unstructured information. Europe has great research potential to advance knowledge on chronic diseases. Revolutionary medical advances need more European investment, cooperation and integrated healthcare systems that can use research to begin clinical trials.

We should:

• Establish European Centres of Excellence for specific diseases.
• Develop EU patient registries for challenging diseases, especially respiratory diseases that make patients vulnerable to severe illness from COVID-19.

• Young people can learn about adopting a healthy lifestyle through cooking - this could be an effective way of combatting the 'obesity pandemic'
• Young people can learn more about the different cuisines throughout Europe
• Older people can teach these courses, so that traditional recipes and heritages are preserved
• This would forge intergenerational dialogue and address the issue of old age loneliness

Smoking on campus grounds should be banned widely so that young people are not incentivised to do it. Moreover, schools should promote more information campaigns about the disadvantages of smoking and drinking alcohol. 

Since beginning of the pandemic, everyone was waiting for invention of a vaccine, because it is meant to be the only way of returning to the normal, pre-Covid life. We now have several types of vaccines, but there are people who oppose the vaccination.

In Georgia, anti-vaxxer movement is quite strong. In many cases the cause of this is lack of knowledge. Many people think that vaccine is dangerous. Local authorities should organise events, online meetings, and advertise to raise awareness about the COVID-19 vaccination and its benefits.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that dealing with mental health issues is a luxury not many people can afford. We need a mental health pact to organise our resources and tackle mental health issues within our community. Health is more than just physical health: citizens need to understand that there are many ways to be healthy - and mental health is one of them.

The continued uncertainty of 2020 and 2021 is compounded by the longer uncertainty of climate change. For this reason, it is necessary for the European Union to sign and promote a mental health pact, promising to use resources to tackle mental health. We need to:

• tackle the stigma that surrounds mental health
• treat mental health in schools and teach children how to seek help for a variety of mental health issues
• provide psychological support to vulnerable groups, such as those adversely affected by the pandemic and by climate change. This should be subsidised by national authorities and the EU
• subsidise treatment, including therapy
• fund positions for more psychologists within national public health systems
• ensure employers provide necessary paid leave for mental illness

Another measure which would allow us to concentrate more on mental health would be to create an online website where practical help and contact information can be found.

European institutions should write a law that mandates public school restaurants, hospitals and enterprises to always have a vegetarian option on their menu.

Legalise assisted suicide across the EU.

We should legalize cannabis in all member states of the European Union. This will stop organized crime and mafias and increase revenues as well as jobs.

Additionally, alcohol and tobacco companies should be held accountable. Although alcohol and tobacco is far more dangerous than cannabis it has been legal for many years. Companies should be required to pay back into the health system to compensate for the diseases they contribute to.

Patients' needs should be the centrepiece in digital healthcare. While so much is becoming digitalised, when it comes to healthcare, digital access is falling behind. The pandemic has catapulted digital healthcare into society, however young patients with a chronic disease need to see digitalisation implemented to facilitate and improve access to care.

The future of healthcare in Europe should include video consultations with the best doctors across country borders, digital health records and EU-wide electronic prescriptions, to make travel and quality of life better. 

We need a European registry for illnesses, so we know where diseases appear, who is affected, and what treatments are most effective. Many patients do not know the survival rate of certain illnesses or if certain treatments come with risks that could threaten their health in other ways.

In this way, young people can feel confident to work and travel across borders with the knowledge that their healthcare remains accessible.

It is also vital that digital care does not replace in-person care and does not leave behind those who require a physical appointment.

A significant number of scientific and social research studies stress the importance of sex education at secondary school level. Young teenagers are in need of practical and factual information.

In some communities, issues linked to sexuality are taboo and people don't discuss them in homes, schools and centres. Now, as a result, teenagers are in danger of sexually transmitted infections, mental illness, and chronic health problems as well as of LGBTQ discrimination and school bullying.

One of the challenges here is a lack of teachers who possess the necessary knowledge and training to distribute appropriate and correct information about sex and reproductive health. Additional barriers include opposition from cultural and religious leaders, as well as the absence of sex and reproductive health education generally, both at a local and EU level.

Let's unify and provide teachers with the right information, backed by scientists and health specialists, as a starting point.

A more liberal drug policy can help resolve drug-related problems. When substances are allowed, citizens are more likely to use them responsibly. Moreover, as the substances would be sold in legal shops rather than through illegal underground networks, it would be easier to restrict minors' access to drugs.