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An application aimed to help parents taking care of their children’s health. This is the idea behind MyPed, a mobile app developed by a group of physicians that won our Best practice award for general practitioners. The app, available for both Android and iOS smartphone, combines different tools that parents may use to manage their children’s health.

May 27, 2016

Susanna Esposito, professor of Paediatrics at the University of Milan, Italy and president of WAIDID (World Association for Infectious Diseases), thinks that families need more information about safety and efficacy of vaccines, in order to overcome their growing hesitancy towards them.

Communication is the key.

Until the end, it seemed it could sort out to be a happy-ending story, a demonstration of how new social networks, renown for spreading misinformation, can also correct it, when used properly. But the unfortunately predictable finale showed the opposite: counteracting false ideas about vaccines is not that easy. It will take time, a big deal of patience, communication skills and a good, coordinated strategy as well.

It is never easy to develop definitions, especially when we are talking about something that is emerging and changing as we speak. This is the case for Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), an emerging process within European Framework Programs whose definition is new and evolving. However, we can certainly identify a number of key characteristics of RRI, which is an umbrella term including a wide variety of notions, coming from the academia and politics.

“We are so close to ending the polio” and “Still 15 years to a polio-free world” are not contradictory statements. They instead describe, with different degree of optimism, the current framework and the objective to be pursued in the fight against this disease. In other words, we are closer than ever to the target of a world free of polio, but much remains to be done to carry the world across the threshold. Polio eradication is the next issue public health authorities will be committed to in midterm future.

How many ways are there to tell a story and who will do it? In these months we tried to answer those questions by running an analysis of the most relevant tweets and accounts about some key words, chosen by the editorial board, focused on Zika virus and vaccines. We then developed an application to identify the most influential Twitter users on specific topics, according to a list of hashtag we have provided.

A rescue exercise carried out by civil protection and Red Cross volunteers in Tabarre.

Preparedness is a key strategic element of an effective response to health threats. However, despite evident improvements in recent years, there is still large evidence of ineffective management of epidemic and pandemic events at any level, as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa recently showed.

The consideration of sex and gender are not the most obvious issues that come to mind when discussing epidemics and pandemics. However, sex and gender have an important impact on these issues, since barriers to pandemic preparedness and risk behaviour can often be better understood when viewed from a sex and gender perspective.

Both gender and sex have an impact on experiences and behaviours relating to pandemics, epidemics and vaccination. The difference between sex and gender can be confusing, and the two words are often incorrectly used interchangeably.

A MMLAP (Mobilization and Mutual Learning Action Plan) Area has been activated within the Community of Practice of the ASSET website: this area is planned to stimulate the debate between the ASSET consortium and other MMLAP projects on the Best practices to develop and implement the communication between science and society.

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MMLAP and other EU Projects

Health system analysis to support capacity development in response to the threat of pandemic influenza in Asia
Making society an active participant in water adaptation to global change
Public Participation in Developing a Common Framework for Assessment and Management of Sustainable Innovation
Engaging all of Europe in shaping a desirable and sustainable future
Expect the unexpected and know how to respond
Driving innovation in crisis management for European resilience
Effective communication in outbreak management: development of an evidence-based tool for Europe
Solutions to improve CBRNe resilience
Network for Communicable Disease Control in Southern Europe and Mediterranean Countries
Developing the framework for an epidemic forecast infrastructure
Strengthening of the national surveillance system for communicable diseases
Surveillance of vaccine preventable hepatitis
European monitoring of excess mortality for public health action
European network for highly infectious disease
Dedicated surveillance network for surveillance and control of vaccine preventable diseases in the EU
Modelling the spread of pandemic influenza and strategies for its containment and mitigation
Cost-effectiveness assessment of european influenza human pandemic alert and response strategies
Bridging the gap between science, stakeholders and policy makers
Promotion of immunization for health professionals in Europe
Towards inclusive research programming for sustainable food innovations
Addressing chronic diseases and healthy ageing across the life cycle
Medical ecosystem – personalized event-based surveillance
Studying the many and varied economic, social, legal and ethical aspects of the recent developments on the Internet, and their consequences for the individual and society at large
Get involved in the responsible marine research and innovation
Knowledge-based policy-making on issues involving science, technology and innovation, mainly based upon the practices in Parliamentary Technology Assessment
Assessment of the current pandemic preparedness and response tools, systems and practice at national, EU and global level in priority areas
Analysis of innovative public engagement tools and instruments for dynamic governance in the field of Science in Society
Public Engagement with Research And Research Engagement with Society
Computing Veracity – the Fourth Challenge of Big Data
Providing infrastructure, co-ordination and integration of existing clinical research networks on epidemics and pandemics
Promote vaccinations among migrant population in Europe
Creating mechanisms for effectively tackling the scientific and technology related challenges faced by society
Improve the quality of indoor air, keeping it free from radon
Improving respect of ethics principles and laws in research and innovation, in line with the evolution of technologies and societal concerns
Investigating how cities in the West securitise against global pandemics
Creating a structured dialogue and mutual learning with citizens and urban actors by setting up National Networks in 10 countries across Europe
Identifying how children can be change agents in the Science and Society relationship
Establishing an open dialogue between stakeholders concerning synthetic biology’s potential benefits and risks
Transparent communication in Epidemics: Learning Lessons from experience, delivering effective Messages, providing Evidence