Leo&Giulia: a cartoon series to promote health and prevention in primary school-aged children

Abstract Background Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic control measures actively involved people who were called to adopt new and unusual lifestyles. In this context, children had to stay home from school for weeks, had to adapt to new teaching methods and give up socializing. In many countries, not much attention was paid to the educational sector, and, ultimately, to children's physical and psychological well-being. Objectives In this context, we developed an innovative health education audio-visual model to teach children about public health, empower them to adopt preventive behaviours and limit the risk of infection transmission in schools and in the community. Results We designed and produced the animated cartoon series “Leo&Giulia” to convey solid scientific content and key public health messages related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to primary school-aged children. Contents and dialogues were validated by a scientific committee composed of experts in the fields of public health, paediatrics, infectious diseases, and neuroscience, as well as communication experts. The first episode of Leo&Giulia focused on COVID-19 and explained to children what SARS-CoV2 was, its transmission and why schools were closed. Endorsed by the European Commission, it was broadcasted by national public and private television channels and went viral on social media. The second episode of Leo&Giulia, funded by the Italian Ministry of Research, was launched in April 2022 and focused on vaccines and immunization explaining to children how vaccines work and why herd immunity is important for collective health. Conclusions Leo&Giulia is an innovative health education project to help children to better understand how to cope with COVID-19 as a public health challenge. More broadly, the series aims to increase youth engagement by promoting public health values and healthy behaviours. Key messages • Health promotion targeting children is important and contributes to societal health and wellbeing. • Cartoon series are an innovative digital health education tool that effectively increase youth engagement on public health values.


Background:
Around 186 million individuals are facing infertility worldwide, with a huge impact on their wellbeing. Fertility care is considered a key element to promote reproductive health. This study aims to explore young adults' knowledge, perceptions and concerns about infertility and Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), and to contrast it with the information provided by ART clinics.

Methods:
A multi-country qualitative study was conducted in Albania, Belgium, Slovenia, Spain, Italy, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Switzerland within the H2020 B2-INF project (Grant Agreement 872706). In 2021, 10-15 semi-structured interviews were conducted in each country with participants aged 18-30, childless and non-ART users. Additionally, 3-5 clinics' websites in each country were explored. Data was collected in native languages and translated into English. A thematic analysis was carried out.

Results:
In total, 98 interviews were conducted and 38 clinics' websites were explored. Three themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: 1. Parenthood and (in)fertility; 2. Young people's perception on ART; 3. Information and publicity of ART. Parenthood was described as a relationship beyond biological ties and infertility as a social taboo. Most participants perceived ART positively and would use it if needed, although knowledge on ART was low. Participants considered information on ART as scarce and suggested that government-led information campaigns should be launched to raise awareness on it. Concerning clinics, the websites provided information on infertility and exhaustive technical descriptions of ART techniques, although it may be difficult for the general population to understand. Data offered on success rates were unclear and heterogeneous.

Conclusions:
Gaps in citizens' expectations and needs and the information provided by ART clinics were identified. Awareness campaigns are needed to diminish social taboo on infertility and ART and to promote reproductive health.

Key messages:
Assisted Reproductive Technology is positively perceived by young adults, though their knowledge of it and infertility is low. Information campaigns are thus needed to raise awareness among the young. ART clinics have room for improvement in aligning the information provided on their websites with young people's perceptions and needs, and to show it in a more accessible and understandable way.
Abstract citation ID: ckac129.589 Leo&Giulia: a cartoon series to promote health and prevention in primary school-aged children

Background:
Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic control measures actively involved people who were called to adopt new and unusual lifestyles. In this context, children had to stay home from school for weeks, had to adapt to new teaching methods and give up socializing. In many countries, not much attention was paid to the educational sector, and, ultimately, to children's physical and psychological well-being.

Objectives:
In this context, we developed an innovative health education audio-visual model to teach children about public health, empower them to adopt preventive behaviours and limit the risk of infection transmission in schools and in the community.

Results:
We designed and produced the animated cartoon series ''Leo&Giulia'' to convey solid scientific content and key public health messages related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to primary school-aged children. Contents and dialogues were validated by a scientific committee composed of experts in the fields of public health, paediatrics, infectious diseases, and neuroscience, as well as communication experts. Background: There is a consensus on the need to transform the built, economic and socio-cultural environments to promote healthy eating (HE) and physical activity (PA). Yet, limited capacity and the biomedicalisation of public health are often blamed for steering investments towards individual risk factors. In France, local health contracts (LHCs) agreed between a regional health agency (RHA) and a local government could improve health promotion strategies. We examined how LHCs take into account the environmental determinants of HE and PA.

Methods:
Using the CLoterreS national census, we analysed a stratified random sample of 53 LHCs with a view to identify if actions target individual (knowledge, skills, etc.) or environmental (interpersonal, organisational, community or political) determinants. To this end, we developed an instrument drawing from different typologies of action and consensus documents to assess the integration of the socioecological approach in programmes. We ran a series of interviews with RHA staff (n = 39) and local actors (n = 23) to put into context our results.

Results:
Out of 53 LHCs, 42 included at least one action on HE or PA. For these topics, there was a higher proportion of actions targeting individuals (83% and 76% per contract, respectively) than environments (51% and 58%). For the latter, actions on interpersonal determinants (e.g. family) were the most common. However, we also found instances of actions on more distal ones (e.g. to improve nutrition standards in school canteens and walkability). Contextual factors such as local priorities, past experience with health promotion and the involvement of local actors in needs assessment and action planning may influence such orientations.

Conclusions:
LHCs constitute a promising avenue to address the environmental determinants of health-related behaviours. A key feature of this instrument is its capacity to develop intersectoral strategies. Further research will show if LHCs deliver on their action plan. Background: Hospitals and their health care staff were severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Many health professionals faced high levels of stress and burn-out due to unfavorable work environments, limited staffing and highly pressured workloads. Yet, even prior to the pandemic, health professionals in many countries faced challenging work environments with often limited resources and support. At the same time, the roles of health professionals are changing across Europe, with new roles, task-shifting and sharing happening in teams, also driven by the Covid-19 pandemic. From a health system and management perspective, recruitment and retention is critical to ensure that there is a sufficient and well-educated health workforce capable to perform high-quality care. Multiple innovations have been implemented across Europe, these will be presented and discussed with a view towards evaluating complex interventions, sustaining innovations, ensuring the scalability and transferability of proven interventions for the benefit of health professionals and wider society.
Objectives: This workshop will address innovative strategies at the micro (team level), meso (healthcare setting) and macro level (policy) to ensure that health professionals are motivated, perform high-quality care in teams and are sufficiently supported by enabling work environments and recruitment and retention policies. Innovations to improve work environments, task-shifting as well as recruitment and retention will be discussed, based on the findings from four EU-funded research projects: Magnet4Europe, H-Work, TASHI and METEOR. The format is a 'round table' with 5 panel discussants. The Magnet4Europe project focuses on the reorganization of hospital work environments for nurses and physicians in hospitals in five European countries. Innovative elements include a system-, inter-professional, organization-wide change management, structural empowerment of clinical staff and one-on-one twinning of European hospitals with U.S. twinning partners.

Innovations in the EU projects:
The H-WORK project aims to design, implement and validate psychosocial interventions to promote mental health and wellbeing in SMEs and the public sector. Innovative elements are the evaluation of interventions at multiple levels (individual, team, manager and organisational level) and the development of the H-Work innovation platform with toolkits, policy briefs and novel digital solutions. The TaSHI project provides a novel and up-to-date knowledge on task shifting and transferability of good practices in implementation. Through a cross-national and -sectoral perspective, the focus is on task shifting as an innovation towards more effective organisation of care and workforce, to improve efficient and sustainable systems. METEOR aims to enhance scientific knowledge on the predictors of job retention for healthcare workers and develops