A collection of best practices in public health

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?

Following the Business Dictionary, “A best practice is a method… that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark”. On the other hand, a good practice is a method that has shown results or preliminary results superior to those achieved with other means. In particular, as far as ASSET is concerned, good practice will refer to activities that are in alignment with issues that were previously identified by the project.

A key element of these practices will be the active involvement of civil society during their inception/design phase, the implementation phase or the evaluation phase. Projects that incorporate themes of Science-in-Society but where civil society is included with a passive role (such as analyses of social media posts or leaflet dissemination) and without impact on policies or communication strategies, are not to be considered as best/good practices of interest for the ASSET platform.

The search of good practices examples will be focused on some key themes:

• Vaccination: trust rebuilding, trust monitoring, propensity to vaccinate
• Non-pharmaceutical steps, such as decreasing behaviours at risk and/or increasing risk-reducing behaviours
• Health care workers
• Gender issues
• Low income or ethnic minorities
• Communication and PH decision and in particular two-way communication/decision in public health
• Didactic Projects concerning the role of SiS in Pandemics and Epidemics

This is a non-exhaustive list and it will be updated all along the project

By doing so, ASSET experts purse the following general aims:

• To communicate to the civil society the existence of practices of interest for ASSET. In particular, to seek out solutions that are already de facto best practices but have not yet been widely adopted.
• To encourage, when possible, the participation of the civil society to ongoing practices.
• To transfer knowledge of best practices among researchers, practitioners, institutions and organizations.

Note that the Best Practice Platform will be sided by a Stakeholder Portal, which will provide a gateway for interested stakeholders, organizations, institutions, universities and other relevant actors to register their interest in becoming involved in the discussion on these practices and on issues that needs the creation of new ones.

Finally, as result of the above considerations, and taking into the account the collected practices and feedback gathered in the Stakeholder Portal, a section of the Best Practice Platform will be devoted to the development of guide lines for the development of best practices.