Dear colleagues,

We are still in time to wish you all a very happy new year. Let us hope that 2022 brings opportunities for improving health, freedom and connection for us. We are excited to announce our main event: the 15th European Public Health Conference 2022 – Strengthening health systems: improving population health and being prepared for the unexpected scheduled as an in-person event in Berlin from 9-12 November 2022. Please mark it in your calendars now. We are also working on drafting workshops for the upcoming 15TH European Public Health Conference and would very much like to work with you in defining relevant topics for workshops. The call for abstracts opens February 1 and we have until May 1 to submit proposals.

Until Berlin, we are delighted to share news of a few activities and events that may interest you. We would like to invite you to participate in the European Public Health Week (EUPHW) from the 16 to the 20 May 2022. This year theme is ‘Health throughout the life course’. Since health and Environment in childhood and adolescence dictates health in later life, we are particularly keen to support the daily themes that include: A healthy and health literate youth, vaccination, mental health, climate change to building resilience and health systems. We will be happy to host workshops organised by you for any of these themes (email Dr. Julia Dratva (drat@zhaw.ch). Alternatively just come along, attendance is free and you can sign up or submit an event here EUPHW 2022 Submit an event (db.eupha.org).

Finally, we anticipate there will be much more work to do in coming months and years in CAPH- we are looking to add new members to our Directorate – if you would like to know more about what’s involved, look at the CAPH webpages, action plan.

Looking forward hearing your ideas and working closely with you in 2022.

 

Best wishes,

Professor Sonia Saxena & Dr Julia Dratva

President-Elect, & Vice President of CAPH EUPHA







 




Upcoming EUPHA events

May

European Public Health Week (EUPHW) 2022 – ‘Health throughout the life course’ 
Daily themes (in concept)

  • 16 May: A healthy youth and health literate youth
  • 17 May: Vaccination as key prevention strategy
  • 18 May: Climate change affects our health
  • 19 May: No health without mental health
  • 20 May: Building resilient health systems

November 

The 15 th European Public Health Conference 2022. Abstract submission for the in person 15th EPH Conference 2022 is open from 1 February until 1 May 2022, 18:00 CET. Abstracts are invited for workshops, oral presentations, pitch presentations and E-posters. All sessions will be 60 minutes. Do not miss the opportunity to showcasehard work. You can find more information here.

Other upcoming events

We are delighted to share with you a really exciting and innovative initiative. The Children’s Mental Health & the Effect of COVID-19. This conference is led by Children and will take place On Saturday the 26th of February 2022 from 9am – 1pm (Malta time). Please register your participation by sending an email on: childrenshub.mfws@gov.mt

Current campaigns

This year we continue to support our current campaigns on childhood vaccination, preventive care, mental health and wellbeing and health in education. 

Help us keep routine vaccination programmes going by joining the ‘Vaccinate Your Child’ Campaign– in three steps -1. Download the message in any European language, 2. Take a selfie, 3. Post. Do not forget to tag @CAPHEUPHA on twitter.

School health promotion and safety: This year CAPH has partnered The UNESCO Chair in Global Health and Education (WHO Collaborating Centre) and contributed to a WHO guideline on school health.

Research and policy highlights

This month we would like to focus our research insights on the willingness around covid-19 vaccination among children and adolescents. A quick search in Medline already shows 100 publications dealing with this issue. Among many interesting and relevant articles, we have selected three that we would like to share with you. They represent different methodologies and perspectives.

Students’ age and parental level of education influence COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy

This German study investigated vaccination hesitancy in a cohort of German secondary school students. The researchers assessed 903 students between age 9 and 20 in the period between 17 May 2021 and 30 June 2021. 68.3% (n = 617) reported intention to undergo COVID-19 vaccination, while 7% (n = 62) did not want to receive the vaccine and 15% (n = 135) were not yet certain. Age and parental level of education influenced COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Children under the age of 16 as well as students whose parents had lower education levels showed significantly higher vaccine hesitancy.

To be or not to be vaccinated against COVID-19 – The adolescents’ perspective – A mixed-methods study in Sweden

This Swedish study explored Swedish adolescents’ willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and its association with sociodemographic and other possible factors. The main qualitative question concerned adolescents’ thoughts on vaccination against COVID-19 and evaluated whether the adolescents would like to be vaccinated when a COVID-19 vaccine is made available. In total, 702 adolescents aged between 15 and 19 responded to the questionnaire. The results showed that nearly one in three adolescents had not decided if they wanted to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Of the participants, 54.3% were willing to be vaccinated. Girls had higher levels of anxiety about the vaccine compared to boys. In addition, high levels of anxiety affected the participants’ willingness to be vaccinated. One reason for being undecided about the vaccine was that participants felt they did not know enough about it. Practising social distancing increased willingness to be vaccinated, as reflected in the qualitative results, which showed participants wanted to be vaccinated to protect others.

Anticipating hopes, fears and expectations towards COVID-19 vaccines: A qualitative interview study in seven European countries

Drawing from qualitative interview data collected in October 2020 as part of the pan-European SolPan study, this study explores early and anticipatory expectations, hopes and fears regarding COVID-19 vaccination across seven European countries. The authors found that stances towards COVID-19 vaccines were shaped by personal lived experiences, but participants also aligned personal and communal interests in their considerations. Trust, particularly in expert institutions, was an important prerequisite for vaccine acceptance, but participants also expressed doubts about the rapid vaccine development process.

Inspiring

Here we sharing an innovative community-first, youth-oriented model launched by young people to improve youth mental health. Peer helping peers is not something that can work in countries not only with scarce mental healthcare resources, but in many European countries as well. We hope you feel inspired as much as we did.

Tom Osborn: A new way to help young people with their mental health | TED Talk

TED Fellow Tom Osborn wants more young people to have access to the mental health support they need. With the Shamiri Institute, he and his team are training 18- to 22-year-olds to deliver evidence-based mental health care to their peers in Kenya — which has only two clinicians for every million people. Hear how their community-first, youth-oriented model could become a template to help kids across the world lead successful, independent lives.

Share your work with us

As a CAPH member, you can expect to receive two – three newsletters per year. Please contribute with anything you wish to share with the community. It can be short articles 150 words max with any graphics/ pictures to convey your message. Send it directly (lou.cantarero@sund.ku.dk).

And If you have something special to tweet about don’t forget to link to our twitter handle @CAPHEUPHA so we can help to share. 







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