Features

ASSET is close to its conclusion and a concluding conference will be held in Rome, on October 30-31, to present all the main outcomes of the project. This event will take place at the hotel NH Roma Leonardo Da Vinci and will be targeted to a selected audience of EU stakeholders and policy makers. Its aim is to enhance advocacy and intersectoral approach in a multisetting scenario applied to fostering preparedness and response toward Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), like epidemics and even pandemics.

Persons over the age of 65 have a higher risk for severe influenza-related complications and have the highest risk of mortality from influenza. Vaccination of older persons have traditionally been the main focus of influenza vaccine policy, and while vaccines are not as efficient in this population as in younger adults, it still remains the most effective public health tool to protect against influenza (WHO 2012). Vaccination recommendations vary slightly between countries in Europe, however almost all cover older people as a specific target group (Endrich et al 2009).

ASSET is close to its conclusion and a concluding conference will be held in Rome, on October 30-31, to present all the main outcomes of the project. This event will take place at the hotel NH Roma Leonardo Da Vinci and will be targeted to a selected audience of EU stakeholders and policy makers. It is conceived as a mobilization and mutual learning event at local, national and international levels on Science in Society related issues in epidemics and pandemics.

This editorial introduces the new release of ASSET paper series.

Social media, mobile technology and social networks constitute an extremely rich and dynamic information ecosystem. With a world population of more than seven billion people, almost half of them have an internet connection, while the active social media users are about 2.8 billion. Huge numbers, which clearly shows how deep these instruments are rooted into our society. It is not a surprise, then, that social media are also increasingly present in disaster and crisis response efforts. Their growing presence in these scenarios represent an issue, but also an opportunity.