Daniela Filakovska and Andrej Belak have met on 16th of February 2018 with the new appointed director of the WHO office in Bratislava, dr. Tatul Hakobyan, to introduce him into our team’s involvement in the national health research and policy concerning marginalized Roma communities. Dr. Hakobyan has been impressed by our record and offered personal support to and collaboration on all our currently running projects wherever we might find it useful.

Daniela Filakovska and Andrej Belak were on 16th of February 2018 invited by the Government Roma plenipotentiary to discuss the possibilities of enhancing education of healthcare professionals with respect to patients from marginalized Roma communities in the country – a requirement of the latest action plans of the National Roma integration strategy in the area of health on which our team has collaborated. At the meeting, formation of a new expert group has been agreed which will approach this activity systematically in collaboration with our team.

Our team once again hosted Kateřina Paclíková, Msc. from Palacký University in Olomouc, OUSHI since January 19th till 22nd 2018. We continued to intensively collaborate on mapping of care system for children with emotional and behavioral problems as a part of her PhD studies and elaborated first draft of a research paper.

This week (12.-15.2. 2018) our colleagues, Peter Kolarčik and Ivana Skoumalová, attended learning event organized by University of Groningen within the framework of IMPACCT project.

Learning 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.

Our colleagues Daniela Filakovska and Andrej Belak participated in the 2nd meeting of the Working Group in Bratislava, which is preparing a unique pilot project for cooperation with hospitals.

The activity is implemented within the framework of the Healthy Community National Project 2A – under the title “Health Assistants in the Hospitals Environment”.

As a result, several meetings with hospital representatives have already been carried out, a description of the work activities, the minimum qualification requirements for this position, the preparation of training activities and many other important details have been agreed.

Our colleagues from University in Groningen, prof. Sijmen Reijneveld and assoc. prof. Jitse van Dijk visited our department on 5-7 February, 2018 to discuss issues related to our long lasting cooperation, ongoing PhD studies and plans for innovative approaches in our runnning projects and collaborations.

Prof. Andrea Madarasová Gecková met on 31. 1. 2018 in Bratislava with dr. Tatul Hakobyan, new WHO Representative for the Slovak Republic to discuss possible further collaboration on our well-estabslihed project focused on social determinant of health of school-aged children as well as our new starting project focused on population living in segregated Roma settlements.

As part of our Department’s consultations for the Healthy Communities National Project, over the last several weeks Andrej Belák and Daniela Fiľakovská have taken part in successful negotiations with the managements of four major Slovak hospitals on behalf of the project’s pilot introducing a new role of a health-mediator for patients from segregated Roma communities visiting Gyn-Obs and Paediatrics departments.