Good Practices In Europe Research Articles

Spatial Planning Response to the Challenges of Climate Change Adaptation: An Analysis of Selected Instruments and Good Practices in Europe

The task of combining objectives, spatial planning instruments, and climate change adaptation targets is a complex endeavour that varies across countries. There is a call for a universal discussion on how spatial planning should respond to climate change challenges. To address this issue, this article delves into the approaches taken by Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Poland, aiming to explore how spatial planning instruments support climate change adaptation goals. The authors, based on a jointly extracted questionnaire, identified what they consider to be the most relevant examples of instruments to use to ensure the integration of spatial planning objectives and the response to climate challenges. The identified solutions are compared in detail. Three key spatial planning themes emerged in this study: investment in renewable energy, the development and preservation of green infrastructure, and the protection of coastal zones. This article examines the systemic solutions found in these countries, discusses the role of both classical and sectoral spatial planning instruments, and identifies the level of public authority responsible for key interventions. It shows that instruments developed at the supra-local level should support local authorities by providing them with legal and substantive arguments for developing solutions relevant to climate challenges.

Gender Equality Plans in Bulgarian Higher Education Institutions

Gender equality plans are an eligibility criterion in research funding under Horizon Europe from 2022. The article analyzes the ideas of gender equality in a European and national context and the applicable terminology. Discussions on indicators of gender equality in higher education, national specifics and approaches to their implementation are presented. The aim of the article is to systematize the issues, methodological problems and solutions in the development of GEPs, examining the theoretical foundations, regulation, statistics and good practices in Europe and Bulgaria. The topic is gaining popularity in our country and so far the emphasis has been on building organizational capacity and culture, instead of engaging with specific indicators of gender equality.

S02-3 Physical activity policies and good practices in Europe

BackgroundThe establishment of the EU physical activity (PA) guidelines and the HEPA monitoring framework has had an impact on policy development and implementation across the region from 2015. This works presents results from the third round of monitoring in 2021 and discusses trends since 2015.MethodsA questionnaire was distributed in 2021 to all EU Member States of the WHO European Region through the network of PA Focal Points, who were requested to collect data from national colleagues and complete the questionnaire. All EU Member States (27 in 2021) responded to the survey on the implementation of the 23 indicators of the HEPA monitoring framework.ResultsThe results of the 2021 round of data collection on HEPA indicators showed an overall stabilization of the implementation of PA promotion policies. Besides important increases in several indicators, such as indicators 15 (HEPA in the training of physical education teachers), 20 (Schemes to promote physical activity at the workplace) and 21 (Schemes for community interventions to promote physical activity in older adults), many others decreased and others showed no progress. Most national physical activity policies or action plans were multi-sectoral, with good coverage of the sectors recognized as important for HEPA promotion. While some methodological aspects may have affected the results, this round also reflected policy implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2021). COVID-19 has had a significant impact on all sectors of society but especially on health, sports, education and mobility, which are major areas for PA promotion and policy implementation.ConclusionsThere seems to be an overall stabilization of the implementation of PA promotion policies since 2015. Public health experts and decision makers could utilise the increase in public awareness of the health benefits of physical activity kindled by the COVID-19 crisis to implement new health-promoting policies. Policy design, development and implementation of HEPA promotion must be strengthened for post-COVID-19 social and economic recovery.

17.C. Workshop: I-Care Lab: Puglia scaling up in integrated care for the future of digital health and social system

Abstract Background Healthcare systems around the world are under great pressure to drive forward transformation in order to meet the evolving needs of their populations. Ageing and chronicity are the main challenges to be tackled. In many countries care is too often fragmented and has clear deficiencies in quality, inducing low responsiveness of the healthcare system and low satisfaction with healthcare services. To address these challenges, the transformation towards integrated care has the potential to address deficiencies in order to obtain accessible, quality, effective and sustainable health care. Objectives The objectives of this workshop are to present 3 innovative projects undertaken by Puglia Region, by means of its Strategic Regional Agency for Health and Social Care AReSS, within the framework of the I-CARE LAB, a think tank and beta site for integrated care focused on the production of evidence-based knowledge and systematic approaches to exploitation and scaling up of good practices. The workshop will present the results of the research that has taken place around the above-mentioned projects and to gather feedback from the participants on their opinions and perspectives about integrate care models, policies, tools and practices. Results The featured projects are based on the collaboration with national and international partners interested in developing tools and approaches to stimulate changes towards more sustainable health and care systems, and in supporting scalability and transferability of good practices in Europe. The knowledge transfer among these institutions represents the added value that can establish a common language and framework of integrated care. The showcased projects focus on vulnerable populations for which integrated care might be most beneficial, e.g., chronically ill, frail elderly, and multi-morbid persons; the projects have identified and described an impressive number of promising practices; there are several plans to evaluate these in the coming years, and other plans to facilitate the wider-spread implementation and scaling up of such programs. During this session, 3 of such projects will present their findings, approaches and connections: SCIROCCO Exchange (assessment of integrated care interventions), FooDia-NET (patient engagement and literacy), EURIPHI (innovation procurement). Conclusions The workshop will be a 90-minute session with 3 presentations with ample time for audience interaction (30-minutes). Three individual members of the above-mentioned projects will be responsible for conducting the workshop (the chair, and 3 people making 3 presentations). The session will be chaired by the AReSS Puglia CEO, who will introduce the workshop. A set of presentations will follow, covering the different session topics corresponded to the 3 projects of the Puglia I-Care Lab. Participants will be asked to actively join in the discussion on the further projects enhancement. Key messages The first impact of the proposed workshop consists of stimulating knowledge and discussion about emerging tools and approaches in Europe towards more sustainable health and care systems. The second expected impact is to create awareness and to support scalability and transferability of good practices in Europe and abroad.

Disease-Management-Programs in the Field of Diabetes Mellitus with Identification of the Best Practice in Europe: A Scoping Review.

The objective of this scoping review was to create an up-to-date descriptive overview of published Disease-Management-Program evaluations conducted within Europe. We also assessed the methodological quality of the evaluation and the comparability of the included studies. The Databases Pub Med via Medline and Embase via Ovid were searched for thematically fitting publications. Out of 649 initial titles and abstracts, 45 full-texts were screened for inclusions. Finally, 21 publications met all inclusion criteria. DMPs from Germany, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Great Britain were included. The results are tabulated in the results section and discussed descriptively. Due to the heterogeneity of the included studies and the application of sometimes potentially biased study design comparisons were difficult. A uniform European-wide evaluation strategy and common quality features would be desirable.

Gamified Applications for Sofia, Promoting Capital`s Cultural and Historical Heritage

Gamified applications are gaining increasing popularity for marketing reasons. The paper explores the specifics of gamed applications for Sofia as a tourist destination based on the cultural and historical heritage of the city. As a result, leading good practices in Europe have been studied and a detailed analysis of the most popular applications for Sofia, their capabilities and limitations has been carried out. Keywords: Gamification, Sofia, In English. Cultural Heritage, Tourist Destination

Dobre praktyki w zakresie szkolnej aktywności fizycznej w Europie

Dobre praktyki w zakresie szkolnej aktywności fizycznej w Europie

The Native Oyster Restoration Alliance (NORA) and the Berlin Oyster Recommendation: bringing back a key ecosystem engineer by developing and supporting best practice in Europe

Efforts to restore the native oyster Ostrea edulis and its associated habitats are gaining momentum across Europe. Several projects are currently running or being planned. To maximize the success of these, it is crucial to draw on existing knowledge and experience in order to design, plan and implement restoration activities in a sustainable and constructive approach. For the development of best practice recommendations and to promote multidimensional knowledge and technology exchange, the Native Oyster Restoration Alliance (NORA) was formed by partners from science, technology, nature conservation, consultancies, commercial producers and policy-makers. The NORA network will enhance scientific and practical progress in flat oyster restoration, such as in project planning and permitting, seed oyster production, disease management and monitoring. It also focuses on joint funding opportunities and the potential development of national and international regulatory frameworks. The main motivation behind NORA is to facilitate the restoration of native oyster habitat within its historic biogeographic range in the North Sea and other European seas along with the associated ecosystem services; services such as enhancing biodiversity, including enhanced fish stocks, nutrient cycling and sediment stabilization. NORA members agreed on a set of joint recommendations and strongly advise that any restoration measure should respect and apply these recommendations: The Berlin Oyster Recommendation is presented here. It will help guide the development of the field by developing and applying best practice accordingly. NORA also aims to combine the outreach activities of local projects for improved community support and awareness and to provide educational material to increase knowledge of the key ecological role of this species and increase awareness among regulators, permit providers and stakeholders. A synthesis of O. edulis restoration efforts in Europe is provided and underlines the general significance in the field.

Sexual education in the European countries

Sweden was the first country in Europe to introduce compulsory sex education into school curricula as early as 1955. It is nowadays integrated in the education systems of many European countries. Is the contemporary approach to sex education realistic in Serbia, as well? In other words, has the state modernised its education system and adapted it to the present-day requirements and needs in this field? With that respect, the paper considers a number of topics related to sex education: contemporary definition of the concept, respect of the relevant human rights, new needs for this type of information, the implementation principles, barriers and models in the European countries, the role of schools, health care institutions and the media, as well as the good practices in Europe. Besides the research results published in scientific papers, important inputs for consideration of the above topics were also taken from the relevant studies of the World Health Organisation, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the European Society of Contraception and Reproductive Health. This has provided the basis for the status assessment and the formulation of expectations with regard to the implementation of youth sex education in Serbia. The emphasis is on working with youth as the key target group for education in this field, although sex education is significant in all stages of life.

STUDENTS’ PERCEPTİON CONCERNİNG ELDERLY PEOPLE WİTH MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS

ARPA project is a strategic project with generous objectives regarding the care of the elderly people facing mental health disorders. The goal of the project is the development of competences with professionals in the field of social work related to support for the elderly people who face mental health issues in such a manner that they would be able to face age related challenges but also the severe problems brought about by such an illness. The project aims a double perspective: dissemination of good practices in Europe on care and accompaniment for the elderly with mental health issues and reduction of social breakdown situations through actions of reintegration in the social life. We wanted to conduct a social enquiry among our students as part of the project to see their perception towards the elderly people, their level of knowledge in terms of mental disorders and palliative interventions when they face such situations. This is a questionnaire-based quality study

Scalability and transferability of good practices in Europe: What does it take?

The B3 Action Group on Integrated Care of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) has been working since 2013 on the collection of good practices illustrating a variety of different approaches and incentives for integrated care in Europe. The catalogue of over 100 good practices has significantly contributed to a better understanding of the existing solutions, resources and expertise that can be pooled together towards the shared goals of the B3 Action Group which is to “replicate and scale-up integrated care in Europe”. There is the hypothesis that sharing of experience of good practices should lead to their “easier and faster” adaptation and implementation in other regions.However, the challenge remains how to best leverage this existing body of evidence and utilise the good practice catalogue to make the learning embedded in the practices more readily and accessible to potential adopters. The good practices are often limited to a particular pilot, project or region but the ambitions of the EIP on AHA and B3 Action Group aims to promote the scaling up of these local innovative solutions across Europe. The challenge is to develop tools that can help us to understand how to stimulate changes towards more sustainable health and care systems, how to support implementation, scalability and transferability of good practices in Europe.The B3 Action Group intends to address this challenge by providing regions with tools to support their efforts in the implementation of integrated care solutions. The B3 Maturity Model (B3-MM) is one example of such a tool. A key notion in the B3-MM is that of understanding the context in which a good practice has been developed, and into which a good practice will be transferred. The main goal of the B3-MM is to provide a multi-dimensional benchmark of the maturity of a context (the regional delivery system and political and organisational environment) in which a good practice operates or is proposed to transfer into.The B3-MM was developed by members of the B3 Action Group over 18 months, in collaboration with 12 EIP on AHA member regions, reflecting their efforts and ambitions in implementing integrated care at scale. A wide spectrum of stakeholders was involved in the development of the B3-MM, including national and regional decision-makers, health and care delivery organisations, health and social care professionals, industry and academia. There is no single primary target population for B3-MM, the intention is to involve all potential stakeholders involved in integrated care who are united by single common objective, which is to achieve the transformation of health and care systems in Europe.The outcomes of the interviews served as the baseline for the development of the B3-MM, including its 12 dimensions, performance indicators and rating scale. By considering each domain, assessing the current situation, and allocating a measure of maturity within that domain (on a 0-5 scale), it is possible for a country or region to develop a ‘radar diagram’. The diagram reveals areas of strengths, and also gaps in integrated care. By comparing and contrasting these radar diagrams, the B3-MM helps regions to identify the actions that more progressive regions have taken in order to be successful and lessons learned from these pioneers to overcome barriers and accelerate results. The real impact of the B3-MM lies in its potential to understand the context requirements of a good practice that is considered for adoption and the level of maturity required for health and social care systems to adopt a particular practice. As such, the B3-MM shows to be a useful tool to facilitate the knowledge transfer and flow of right information from transferring to adopting regions and thus accelerating the process of scaling-up and transferability of good practices in Europe.

European Pathways to Introduce EGNOS and Galileo for Dangerous Goods Transport

Every year the transport of dangerous goods amounts to more than 154 billion tonne-km on European roads, railways and inland waterways (source: Eurostat http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu, year 2013). When speaking about dangerous goods movement, traceability and monitoring are not only a matter of an intelligent and efficient logistics. They also imply aspects related to security and safety, being a concern common to involved industries and authorities.For this reason, tracking & tracing the shipment of dangerous goods requires an efficient collection of timely and precise information about the various operations. Besides, reliability is a fundamental requirement, especially in the case of intermodal transport where different operators and modalities are involved. About 85% of the shrinkage in the overall supply chain occurs while materials, components or finished goods are in transit.In this respect, the satellite navigation technology is a key element, as it enables:•The continuous localization, control and monitoring of goods traffic during transport.•The collection of data to be further analysed for statistical reporting and incident prevention.Systems based on the use of satellite positioning are today widely adopted in the transport of dangerous goods operations. Tracking & tracing devices (installed on board of the asset transporting the goods) can also integrate sensors to enable the monitoring of the status of the goods and different telecommunication means (satellite and/or terrestrial) for positions/data transmission.Various past and on-going European initiatives are also introducing the use of the European satellite navigation (EGNSS, European Global Navigation Satellite System), starting from EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service) and in view of Galileo.Among these initiatives, the project SCUTUM (SeCUring the EU GNSS adopTion in the dangeroUs Material transport, www.scutumgnss.eu) concluded in 2011, exhaustively and successfully demonstrated that EGNOS provides precise and reliable localization and tracking, and thus it is particularly suitable for monitoring the transport of dangerous goods. Today, thanks to SCUTUM, EGNOS is used to monitor around 1,200 road tankers transporting dangerous goods by road in Europe (Italy, France, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic).Capitalizing on SCUTUM's achievements, the on-going project CORE, started in 2014 and with a duration of 4 years, is extending the use of EGNOS to the intermodal transport of dangerous goods, and analysing the advantages of the introduction of Galileo.As done in SCUTUM, also CORE is expected to launch an operational best practice in Europe. Moreover, similarly to SCUTUM, the project's results will feed the on-going UNECE OTIF WG (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Organisation Intergouvernementale pour les Transports Internationaux Ferroviaires Working Group) on Telematics in relation to the use of telematics for the transport of dangerous goods, specifically for what the EGNSS is concerned.

Why do we need to develop public health good practices in Europe

Why do we need to develop public health good practices in Europe

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR EDUCATIONAL DISASTER CENTRE “SAVE THE CHILDREN LIFE”

Abstract. Millions of people are affected by natural and man-made disasters each year, among which women, children, elderly persons, people with disabilities or special needs, prisoners, certain members of ethnic minorities, people with language barriers, and the impoverished are the most vulnerable population groups in case of emergencies. Many national and international organizations are involved in Early Warning and Crisis Management training, particularly focused on the special target to safe children and improve their knowledge about disasters. The success of these efforts is based on providing the specific information about disaster preparedness and emergency in adapted for children educational materials, accompanied with simple illustrative explanations for easy and fast understanding of the disasters. The active participation of the children in the educational activities through appropriate presenting the information, short training seminars and entertaining games will increase their resilience and will contribute significantly to their preparedness and adequate response in emergency situations. This paper aims to present the conceptual framework of a project for establishing an Educational Disaster Centre (EDC) “Save the children life” at University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy (UACEG), providing relevant justification of the necessity to organize such centre in Bulgaria and discussing good practices in Europe and worldwide for children' education and training in case of disastrous event. General concepts for educational materials and children training are shared. Appropriate equipment for the EDC is shortly described.

Comment on: Generic and therapeutic substitution: a viewpoint on achieving best practice in Europe by Johnston et al.[1

Another view on the complex and fascinating subject of generic and therapeutic substitution [1] is welcome. The initiation of a group by Novartis adds to this topical debate [2], although for such documents the background and interests of the authors will influence the conclusions. Complete concordance within Europe should not be expected for groups as diverse as the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, the European Generic Medicines Association, the European Medicines Agency, the British National Formulary, Cochrane Reviews, national regulatory agencies and health technology assessment organizations. Each group will have responsibilities to their respective constituencies, and the term ‘consensus statement’ fails to reflect this diversity. Here, we add another view, with comments from a regulatory perspective.

Generic and therapeutic substitution: a viewpoint on achieving best practice in Europe

Given the current financial climate there is an ever increasing need to substitute drug treatments to optimize expenditure. A closer examination of the beliefs surrounding when substitution is appropriate led a group of European healthcare experts to argue that in some cases these beliefs may be unfounded and that guidelines are needed for clinical practice.

Continuity and change in Swedish family policy reforms

This paper examines whether and to what extent three recently implemented family policies in Sweden change incentives regarding employment and choice of childcare for parents of young children, and whether these incentives differ by income level. These policy innovations warrant close examination because they represent a decisive ideological shift from what was a coherent set of policies that created incentives for high levels of female employment and that has been identified as a model of best practice in Europe. Simulating the economic incentive effects of the three new policies for heterosexual couple families with different levels of income, we find that while family policy in Sweden continues to provide the strongest support for a model of gender equality that combines full-time dual earning with public childcare, alternative organizations of family life are now more affordable. Nonetheless, the extent to which the costs of deviation from this model have changed varies by income level.

IMPLEMENTING EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY IN A NETWORK SETTING: ROAD SAFETY POLICY IN THE NETHERLANDS

In the early 1990s, in order to improve road safety in The Netherlands, the Institute for Road Safety Research (SWOV) developed an evidence-based "Sustainable Safety" concept. Based on this concept, Dutch road safety policy, was seen as successful and as a best practice in Europe. In The Netherlands, the policy context has now changed from a sectoral policy setting towards a fragmented network in which safety is a facet of other transport-related policies. In this contribution, it is argued that the implementation strategy underlying Sustainable Safety should be aligned with the changed context. In order to explore the adjustments needed, two perspectives of policy implementation are discussed: (1) national evidence-based policies with sectoral implementation; and (2) decentralized negotiation on transport policy in which road safety is but one aspect. We argue that the latter approach matches the characteristics of the newly evolved policy context best, and conclude with recommendations for reformulating the implementation strategy.

Transit Oriented Development: una soluzione per il governo delle aree di stazione

The need of reducing urban sprawl, the increasing number of motorized trips, the presence brownfields in strategic areas of cities, great investments in rail transport infrastructures, are all key elements that contribute to the diffusion of “Transit Oriented Development” theories and practices. In many cases applications of TOD principles are still complex, even though is widely recognized in theory the necessity of densify station areas with high quality and functional mix developments. Starting from this critical point, the main research question of this work is: how is it possible to “export” TOD principles and practices in Europe? The article try to answer this question through a comparative analysis of different best practice in Europe and through the definition of TOD procedures. The study analyses the TDA (Transport Development Area) approach proposed by the RICS in UK and the Stedebaan project in The Netherlands. Furthermore the research focuses on the France and Germany study cases, where the regional rail-oriented development is mainly connected with the HST lines construction and the rail network “regionalization” process. Also in Italy the important investment in rail infrastructures was the occasion for station area renewal and station area revitalising, but in most cases with an “urban design” approach rather than transport-land use integrated approach. The main conclusion stress the necessity of a new integrated approach and the definition of a “Station Plan” for the integration of urban and transport interventions.

Best practice in Europe

Best practice in Europe