Our colleague, Lucia Bosakova, published her WHO publication “A bottom-up approach to employment”.

This report reviews a bottom-up approach to employing Roma, a large, hard-to-employ group of people, in Slovakia. This unique approach follows four steps. First, it involves hard-to-employ people in the job search process, ensuring that they receive a stable income that enables them to support their families. Second, it helps them to develop qualifications and skills to improve their opportunities in the labour market. Third, it focuses on improving the quality of life in their community, aiming to make the employment of one family member beneficial for the whole family, and ultimately for the entire community. Fourth, it supports children’s education, aiming to motivate and encourage children to acquire education and skills that could increase their opportunities in the labour market.

On the 21st of June 2018, in Bratislava new Report about Youth was presented by Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic using Health Behaviour in School-aged Children data.

More information along with the document might be found here.

Our department hosts in May and June 2018 two international students, Laura Jansen and Jaroslava Voracova, working on their thesis exploring eating behaviour of adolescents, stimulating inspiring discussion within our team.

Laura Jansen is a student of Global Health master study programe in Maastricht University, The Netherlands, and her thesis on influence of peers’, parental & classmates’ support on eating behavior and body image among Slovak adolescents is supervised by Eva Pilot.

Jaroslava Voracova is a student of Kinantropology PhD study program in Faculty of Physical Culture, Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic, and her PhD thesis on trends in eating behaviour among Czech adolescents is supervised by Erik Sigmund.

Our colleague Ivana Skoumalova passed her dissertation exam on the 20th of June 2018 with research exploring how health literacy profiles could be used to increase efficiency and effectiveness of chronic kidney disease management. Congratulations!!!

Based on contract between UPJS and Healthy Regions (contributory organization of the Ministry of Health)  Andrej Belak and  Daniela Filakovska are currently conducting Health needs assesment of the marginalized Roma communities (MRC). In the first phase, which started in June in first marginalizad Roma community, they discuss health and social determinants of health in MRC not only with relevant stakeholders (social workers, teachers, doctors) but also with Roma families.

Andrej Belak and  Daniela Filakovska were invited by the Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Government of the Slovak Republic for Roma Communities to join thematic work group and participate on revision of the National Roma integration strategy in the area of Health. They also attended the meeting of work group whose aim is professional support and assistance in the implementation of a partial task of the National Project Healthy Communities (HC), which is the pilot introduction of the position of health mediator in hospital environments. We discussed the process of implementation and our cooperation on evaluation of this project. Both meeting were organized in Bratislava on tthe 11th and 12th of June.

Health psychology examines psychological, behavioral and cultural factors or processes related to health, illness or health care. Dialyzed patients are one of the target research groups at LF UPJŠ aiming at improving the efficiency of the provided health services as well as expanding their offer for effective intervention programs.

Researchers from several departments, Institute of Health Psychology, Institute of Clinical Biochemistry, Institute of Physical Education and Sport have taken advantage of their interdisciplinary team, working with foreign workplaces in the Netherlands and Australia, as well as working with the network of dialysis centers FMC – dialysis service, s.r.o. This project is one of world-class pioneering projects that aim at a deeper understanding of the implications of health literacy on various aspects of the health of patients with chronic illness. On the Slovak scale, this is a unique initiative with such a wide range.

More information might be found here.

Petr Mikoska from DIPEX team in OUSHI Olomouc join us in Kosice on 14th of June for IMPACCT projet meeting to share their expertise and experiences in improving health care via improving medical education.

Prof. Debbie Jaarsma from University Medical Centre in Groningen, University of Groningen, Netherlands delivered on 14th of June 2018 as a part of the IMPACCT project meeting organized in Kosice by Department of Health Psychology the lecture “How curriculum innovations may lead to better doctors and better healthcare and vice versa” and discuss this issue with academic community of Medical Faculty Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice.

This week (13.-15.6. 2018) IMPACCT project meeting was organized by our team in Kosice with the representatives from Netherlands, Italy, Ireland and Germany.

Event was aimed to provide necessary knowledge for the project members to enable them to formulate the relevant topics and content of learning units related to health literacy education of medical and nursing students in Europe. Learning units and their content was further discussed and elaborated. Next similar event will focus on finalizing first learning units out of twenty formulated now.