The exploration and adoption of best practices in health by public institutions and non-governmental organizations as well has been growing in recent years. ASSET experts recognize the importance of these activities. Thus, they will gather examples from all around Europe and present them on a dedicated page.
But what exactly are “best practices”, and what are the differences between best and good practices?
While USA recommend universal flu vaccination for 6 months age, some European countries have different strategies, targeting only children with chronic diseases. Susanna Esposito, professor of Paediatrics at the University of Milan, Italy and president of WAIDID (World Association for Infectious Diseases) advocates for a wider coverage against influenza in healthy children as well.
One day, eight countries, fifty participants for each of them, open discussions and a series of questions. These are the ingredients of the citizen consultations organized by ASSET on September 24th, to voice people’s opinion on epidemic preparedness and response.
Parents, healthcare workers, bloggers and science communicators have launched a positive experience in Italy, with the aim of sharing and promoting scientific information towards an important public health goal: to face the drop in vaccine coverage.
In recent years – mainly thanks to the communicative dynamics of the web – drawings, graphs and visualizations have become a powerful way to spread news and information. Social networks are overflowed by memes and animated gifs, and several journals, both digital and paper, make use of infographic to depict concepts and information revealed by large amount of data.
Citizens from the eight Countries partner of the ASSET project will gather on September 24th to discuss and express themselves through a public consultation on some of the key topics of the project:
Living poultry markets, common in China and in other eastern countries, are a typical example of how societal factors can be relevant in the spread of infectious diseases. A science-with-and-for-society approach should therefore find a way to solve this problem without fostering people hostility towards authorities. Even if central slaughters would be the simplest solutions, people would not accept them. Ivan Hung, Clinical Associate Professor and Honorary Consultant in the Department of Medicine at the Queen Mary Hospital of the University of Hong Kong, explains how this issue can be dealt with, in the fight against H7N9 bird flu virus and other new strains.
Using music to convey messages of health education and prevention to the general public. This is the idea behind the participation of ASSET to the Verbier Festival, one of the most prestigious music festival in Europe.
