European Institute of Women’s Health. February 2013.
Traditionally regarded as a male disease, cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one killer of women worldwide. It also is a major cause of serious illness and disability, costly to healthcare systems and destroying women’s quality of life. In the EU, CVD remains the top cause of death for women in each of the twenty-seven EU countries. Only during the last decades has awareness been rising how CVD affects women differently from men, alerting women to their risk.
As a part of the ASSET project, the European Institute of Women’s Health were tasked with liaising with local schools to disseminate the activities of the ASSET project. The schools were to have received funding under the Erasmus Plus programme, which is the programme that combines all the EU’s current schemes for education, training, youth and sport in Europe.
Gender is considered a main issue in Horizon 2020, the largest ever EU Research and Innovation programme, with €80 billion worth of funding available over seven years. The European Commission has identified seven priority areas of societal challenges, with the goal targeting investment in research in these fields. They are:
As reported in the ASSET Strategic plan, the three Summer Schools on Science in Society related issues in Pandemics (2015, 2016, 2017) pose the main challenge of the collaborative project overall that is dealing with the intersectoral approach required by the management of Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEIC), like epidemics and pandemics.
It is often said that sex and gender differences are perceived as overlooked in research design and in clinical trials, even those on vaccines. In 2010, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published the document Sex, gender and influenza, which states that many reports of influenza vaccination rates as well as the safety, efficacy and effectiveness of vaccines around the world do not disaggregate data by sex.
Members of the ASSET projects will present the results of the citizen consultation that took place in eight countries on September 2016 at the European Parliament. Such an event is part of the science-in-society approach performed by the project within the framework of Research and Innovation related to pandemic preparedness. ASSET citizen consultation is an innovative method of engaging citizens on complex issues, providing them with information before asking questions.
The third edition of the ASSET Summer School will be held at the National Centre for Diseases Prevention and Health Promotion (CNaPPS) of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) in Rome from May 30 to June 1, 2017. Pandemics (or more in general public health emergencies of international concern, PHEIC) as well as other major infectious disease outbreaks management do necessarily require a multidisciplinary approach. The ASSET Summer School focuses on
