Our colleagues Andrej Belák and Daniela Fiľakovská were invited to The Institute of Ethnology of SAS on 29 November 2017 to give a lecture on Roma vs. healthcare system at the event organised in cooperation with the Office of the Public Defender of Rights – III. Annual Academy of Roma Studies.

More information could be found here.

Our colleagues Andrej Belák and Daniela Fiľakovská were in November 2017 called in to the Slovak Ministry of Health (MoH SR) regarding the creation of a 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.

This Friday, 1st of December, our HBSC team will test online data collection for upcoming Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study in 2018!

Our work as part of HBSC study resulted in recently published paper “Do sleeping habits mediate the association between time spent on digital devices and school problems in adolescence?” by Daniela Husarova, Lukas Blinka, Andrea Madarasova Geckova, Jan Sirucek, Jitse P. van Dijk, Sijmen  A. Reijneveld in European Journal of Public Health.

We found that the more time adolescents spent on digital devices during leisure time, the more school problems they had. This association was mediated by a higher consumption of soft or energy drinks and a lower quality of sleeping.

Our colleague, Daniela Fiľakovská, was invited to participate actively at the International Interdisciplinary Symposium organized by the Faculty of Health and Social Work of Trnava University in Trnava and the Faculty Hospital Trnava – CIVILIZATION DISEASES III, which took place on 8.11.2017. As a part of the symposium she presented a lecture on “Adolescents with emotional and behavioral problems in the care system” about our Care4Youth research project to the wider professional community.

The DON’T GIVE UP  proposal for for WIDESPREAD-05-2017 Twinning had been submitted in collaboration with our partners at University of Groningen and Leiden University in Netherlands  and Galway University in Ireland.

The aim is to improve our capacities in research on vulnerable populations and in supporting national evidence-based policies to improve their health, along with WHO Europe, the state ministries, local NGOs and other stakeholders. The consortium is optimally configured to accelerate the development of UPJS following two parallel strategies: 1) To increase UPJS scientific capacities needed for development of multifaceted and participatory evidence-based-policies, which will enhance its legitimacy and effectiveness in promoting young people’s potential, currently in peril because of socio-economic developments, 2) To increase UPJS’ capacity to export its expertise in knowledge translation to the wider Central and East European region. To reach these goals, collaboration has been established with advanced partners who excel in the methodologies required (e.g. participatory research, mixed methods, stakeholder involvement), and in (research on) vulnerable youth (e.g. lifestyle, societal deprivation, health and social care). Moreover, they excel in training and coaching junior and senior researchers, and in establishing a setting for top-research (e.g. leadership, institutional embedding, acquirement of means). DON’T GIVE UP will enable the UPJS team to become an established excellent European research centre regarding vulnerable youth. Excellence will be achieved through the training in state-of-the-art quality approaches in scientific research, and collaboration in knowledge translation from the advanced partners to the coordinating institution, based on an extensive audit of gaps in the related capacities.

We don’t give up in trying to improve, and therefore labelled our consortium DON’T GIVE UP. Keep fingers crossed with our team, evaluation results will be announced in APRIL 2018.

An international consortium received a European Grant of € 450,000 to develop an educational program that aims to improve the communication competences of medical students and nursing students to communicate better with older patients with low health literacy. The grant is part of the EU Erasmus+ program.

Older people with low health literacy often find it difficult to cope with illness and the associated treatment. They have difficulties to  comprehend medical information and consequently adhere to medical advice and take their medication properly is often problematic. In general these older adults have limited knowledge about illness and health. Healthcare providers often have insufficient knowledge and skills to communicate effectively with this group of older adults. Strengthening communicative skills of future healthcare providers can help improve care for these older people.

The so-called IMPACCT project is led by Andrea de Winter working at the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands. The project is carried out in cooperation with partners from the Netherlands (RUG) Ireland (NUIG), Belgium (EURASHE), Italy (ARS), Slovakia (UPJS) and Germany (Jacobs University).

The coming 3 years the consortium will devote itself to developing, implementing and evaluating new communication education for future health care providers in Europe. All insights are also used to develop a range of digital classes  in a Massive Online Open Course for a wide audience. All partners hope that our joint efforts will enrich the education and will have impact on the development of competences of students. We expect that this will lead to more patient-centred communication affecting the health and well-being of older patients with low health literacy.

IMPACCT stands for IMproving PAtent Centered Communication Competences: To build professional capacity regarding health literacy in medical and nursing education.

Teleconference on Preventive Medicine between Košice and Bratislava host our colleagues. Dr. Peter Kolarčik presented concept of Health Literacy and its utilization in health care system. Prof. Andrea Madarasová Gecková with colleague dr. Slepičková from OUSHI Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic, introduced DIPEx methodology and utilization of patients experience via healtalk.org or hovoryozdravi.cz webportal in clinical practise as well as in training of health care providers.

More information about the event could be found here.

On 8-10 November 2017, our colleagues Daniela Husárová and Laura Urbanová met with other prominent researchers in adolescent health on the regular meeting of Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study network discussing cooperation on research topics and finalising protocol for upcoming data collection in 2017/2018.

“Slovakian adolescents who said it was important for them to pray or meditate and for their lives to have joy and meaning were at lower risk of bullying others. The research also found those individuals were less likely to observe bullying by others, indicating positive peer relationships that influenced their own attitudes toward belittling others. “They think that their peers are not involved in bullying behavior. This afterwards reduces their risk of bullying others,” researchers found. The findings, researchers concluded, indicate “the need to promote strategies that support the development of spiritual well-being among adolescents, as it can play an important role in decreasing the prevalence of bullying.”

Original post could be found here.

Cited manuscript could be found here.