From 27-29 March 2023, Transmissible participated in a seminar at the Paris Saclay University under the European University Alliance for Global Health (EUGLOH) network to present the experience in reaching out to healthcare workers with Learning Games and Public Health Storytelling. We joined the seminar organizers in writing an article about "New pedagogical Tools for Vaccine Education", published this week in BMC Medical Education. Below is an excerpt.

HC professionals take an important position among influencers in the vaccine decision making pathway. They are considered trustworthy information sources by parents and can, therefore, be strong influencers. Some feel ill-equipped to engage in conversation around hesitancy. If they are hesitant themselves, this impacts their patients. The evidence regarding risks and benefits of vaccination is often embedded in technical, complex language.

HC professionals and health policymakers may find it hard to detect the stories behind the evidence that are easier to grasp and worth sharing with parents. Providing professionals with storytelling techniques expands their communication toolset. An example of this can be found in “Perspectives on Vaccination”, a thematic overview of evidence and key points from peer-reviewed publications on vaccination, intertwined with a comic book narrative of a group of gardeners aiming to keep their gardens healthy. For each of the 26 main themes around vaccination, the illustrated story provides the reader with a 1-page analogy of the relevant technical concepts that may help communicate such evidence to non-specialized target groups.

It is essential for HC students to understand the complex landscape surrounding vaccination, which involves a broad array of professional stakeholders, including ministries, national institutes, medical associations, HC managers, regulators, manufacturers, media, and patient organizations. To ensure the successful implementation of vaccination programmes, it is critical for these entities to collaborate effectively. HC students should also be aware of the importance of being intimately familiar with the various positions and dilemmas related to vaccination policy among these stakeholders. They should be trained to listen and understand why people resist vaccination, not just how to encourage them to vaccinate. This type of learning is expected to develop advanced communication skills and interpersonal empathy, which enhance HC students' ability to connect with people across a range of vaccine practices and viewpoints.

The Vaccination Policy Dilemma Game “Play your Part” brings stakeholders together to simulate policy choices in vaccination. The game mechanics simulate how different policy proposals might influence the Key Performance Indicators of the WHO Global Vaccine Action Plan 2011–2020.
Students aim to become the health professionals of the future. Challenging their creative thinking about dealing with the complexity of hesitancy and the stakeholders in that field may be achieved by learning games in the curriculum as seen on other health issues, such as the Collaborative Epidemic Response Game FluFighters^TM that is embedded in the curriculum of medical students at several Dutch, British and Austrian universities since 2018.

That’s how many multidisciplinary experts we have from 112 countries & territories on the @Nature global #COVIDconsensus which I am proud to announce that I am a part of. This paper focuses on how to end the #COVID19 pandemic as a public health threat, and officially launched TODAY at https://go.nature.com/3NtcfCM!

Specific actions are required to end #COVID19 as a public health threat & our new #COVIDconsensus paper provides actionable recommendations with a whole-of-society and whole-of-government approach to make that possible in the months, not years, to come.

As a result of the large number of experts, wide geographical representation & Delphi study design, this may prove to be a model for developing responses to future global health emergencies. https://go.nature.com/3NtcfCM!

Arnold Bosman, M.D., participated in the observational study published in Frontiers in Public Health showing low rates of reported severe adverse events after immunization

At the European Health Managers Association (EHMA) Conference in Brussels, it was all about Health Managers and Gaming. Commissioned by MSD / Sanofi, Transmissible supported Pandemos to moderate a Vaccination Stakeholder Engagement Game at the EHMA Conference in Brussels.

Pandemos developed the Vaccination Ecosystem game to engage stakeholders in an interactive debate about the European Vaccination Action Plan. Ten stakeholders each receive a specific assignment to take actions that will improve two Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of the Vaccination Ecosystem. The more support their chosen action receives from other stakeholders, the more effective it will have. However, different stakeholders will focus on different KPIs, so you need to choose well.

Five players form one stakeholder team: the Ministry of Health, Regulators, Vaccine Manufacturers, Health Care Professionals, EU Agencies, Media, Procurement Bodies, NITAG, Civil Societies and R&D Partners. And once the actions are implemented, the Ecosystem changes. And though an action may promote some KPI, it will undermine others. So, all stakeholders must work together to identify the best actions to heal the Ecosystem again.

Curious? Check out the Pandemos website.

Ashis Brahma hosts a weekly webinar on the topic "Good care in healthcare and public health". Recently, he interviewed Arnold Bosman of Transmissible on the topics of Field Epidemiology, Trans-Disciplinary work, and Creativity. View this, and more interviews on Crowdale.com.

Ashis and Arnold speak Dutch (so, be warned)

ECDC publishes revised Epidemiology Competencies.

On April 8, 2022, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) published the revised  Competency Framework for Public Health Epidemiology. Transmissible participated in this revision process. The Association of Schools for Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) led the revision process.

Lastly, based on this work, ECDC developed a self-assessment tool for these competencies in their EVA platform.

Why is this impactful? What is at stake? Firstly, competency frameworks are essential for the harmonization of public health capacities between countries. Next, these frameworks provide valuable guidance for future curricula of educational institutions. Lastly, they offer a repository of functional descriptions that can be used for job profiles and performance monitoring.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control expressed appreciation to the team involved in this revision.

I take this opportunity to thank and to congratulate the whole team on the work accomplished
(Jeanine Pommier, ECDC)

ECDC publishes revised Field Epidemiology Competencies. 

The COVID19 pandemic is still with us after 22 months. And globally, there is no sign of stopping. The World Health Organization provides expert guidance to all countries on the best-known response to this public health threat. Still, we see large variations in national approaches. In The Netherlands, for example, the government has put most emphasis on vaccination, while releasing most of the non-pharmacological interventions that were in place to keep the virus transmission in check. Even when the baseline rate of infections was still high (over 2000 cases daily).

Unfortunately, soon after releasing these control measures, numbers started rising again in September, despite a vaccination coverage of 85% of the population over 12 years of age.

News Channel EenVandaag invited Arnold Bosman (Transmissible) to comment on the situation and the need for specific measures. The below fragment is in Dutch.

The key message is that vaccines are important, but will not be sufficient to control the pandemic alone. Additional control measures will always be needed. The challenge is to find the right mix of baseline measures, that will allow society to remain open at most levels. The key is to adopt a strategy of containment. This would be the biggest step forward for The Netherlands, where the government still maintains a mitigation strategy, allowing significant virus circulation up to levels that are just under the healthcare capacity threshold. As the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control have stated regularly: mitigation strategies are not advisable, as the risk of uncontrollable outbreaks, that require stringent lockdown measures, is very high.

We designed the learning game URGE with Grumpy Owl Games as a multidisciplinary public health challenge in three rounds. The game is produced and distributed by Pandemos - the public health gaming company. URGE forces specialists out of their professional silos to team up against the greatest challenge of their careers. The team must race against time and develop scenarios to protect the population. For this, they must come out of their comfort zone and start making decisions as a team.

The Netherlands School of Public Health (NSPOH) commissioned Pandemos to create this game as part of their curriculum.

We tried out the game on July 14, 2021, to test the first reactions at the school for public health. This helped us to finalise the game and launch it on September 2 at the NSPOH.