Our colleagues Lucia Bosakova and Zuzana Dankulincova attended annual network meeting of DIPEx international online. Since November 3 till December 3 network members from all around the world discussed their work progress in the last year, limitations and opportunities raised during COVID-19 pandemic and plans for upcoming year. What a wonderful time with inspiring people.

DIPEx International is a unique global collaboration of scholars, clinicians, and patients committed to enriching our understanding of people’s experiences of health, healthcare and illness and bringing that new knowledge into the world.

In case you want to learn more about DIPEx international, visit https://dipexinternational.org/

In the words of World Health Organisation – Every move counts and it is a pleasure for us that Kosice region has the concept of support for physical activities of the inhabitants of the Košice self-governing region 2020 – 2025 (2030) and Jaroslava Kopcakova supported professional opposition of this document. Fingers crossed for Kosice region full of movement!

Symbolically, on the day when we are celebrating the Gentle Revolution in Slovakia (on 17th November), we are celebrating also a signature of a double degree agreement of three PhD. candidates. During the collaboration between University of Groningen and  University of Pavol Josef Safarik in Kosice ( Coherent-Community Health Research Network, previously called KISH) more than 30 young people graduated at UMCG. Today we are happy to hold in our hands signed double degree agreements for three other young, talented and for research passionate ladies, candidates.

Our fingers crossed for Shoshana Chovan, Viktoryia Karchinskaya and Simona Horanicova.

Read our fresh scientific article on health literacy in dialyzed patients. We explored whether depression and anxiety mediate the association of health literacy with diet non-adherence in dialyzed patients. The results of the study showed that anxiety and depression partly mediated this association. Our findings imply that attention is needed to focus on early and regular screening for the symptoms of depression and anxiety and their treatment in dialyzed patients. Decreased capacities in HL may lead to feelings of failure, frustration, passivity, or uncertainty in relation to treatment and health improvement and thus result in decreased diet adherence. Feelings of confusion related to health information and treatment in connection to anxiety or depression may affect communication with health care providers, thus they should pay more attention to encourage patients to be active in participation and offer psychological support where needed.

Read more in the open-access journal: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/21/7913

Preparation on new GoPA! Country Card  for  SLOVAK REPUBLIC are now finishing! Our collegue Jaroslava Kopcakova colaborated on preparation of new Global Observatory for Physical Activity (GoPA) country card of lovak republic in English and in Slovak version.

“We are working hard so that the Country Cards become an evaluation and advocacy tool for helping governments, researchers and society to improve their health through physical activity” Andrea Ramirez Varela – Coordinator of the Global Observatory for Physical Activity – GoPA!

Will be avalaible soon on website http://www.globalphysicalactivityobservatory.com/

From 9th to 11th November 2020 our colleagues  Lucia Bosakova, Zuzana Dankulincova and Jaroslava Kopcakova attended the HBSC Autumn network meeting which was hosted online.

This meeting brought together HBSC members from across the globe.  At this meeting, we tried to decide on the final content of the 2021/22 Mandatory Questionnaire and plan together for the next survey round. This is a critical stage of the survey cycle which is entirely dependent on the collective efforts and engagement of the network as a whole.

It is a pleasure for our Department of Health Psychology and Methodology Research and CoHeReNt network to be a country contact (especially for Jaroslava Kopcakova as a contact person for Slovak republic ) for the Global Observatory for Physical Activity (GoPA). We are looking forward to further collaboration with GoPA.

We are delighted that a project called PHYSICAL ACTIVITY-RELATED INJURIES PREVENTION IN ADOLESCENTS (Project acronym: PARIPRE) in ERASMUS+ Sport Collaborative Partnerships Call 2020 was successfully supported!!!

University of Presov as coordinator together with partners from University of Pavol Josef Safarik in Kosice (Dpt. of Health Psychology and Research Methodology) and our colleagues from Czech republic, Poland, Slovenia and Finland are happy and ready for our further cooperation in this project.

We are so happy to announce that special issue on Adolescent Health in Central and Eastern Europe is published by International Journal of Public Health.

You will find 4 editorials of highly esteem experts and 20 research papers from authors originated across Central and Eastern Europe exploring wide range of topics.

https://link.springer.com/journal/38/volumes-and-issues/65-8

Together with our colleagues from the Czech Republic, we had a closer look at the conceptualization of Roma in policy documents related to social inclusion and health in the Czech Republic. Our aim was to answer the following questions: How are the Roma presented in the documents as actors in relation to health? What role is ascribed to them? How much is their participation expected? We provided evidence of problematic conceptions of Roma and demonstrated how anti-Gypsyism and ethnic blame is still present in political discourse.

Article could be found here.