PRECONCEPTION HEALTH OF YOUTH, bridging the gap in and through education Erasmus Project

Project Title

PRECONCEPTION HEALTH OF YOUTH, bridging the gap in and through education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

At the heart of this project was common European concern that the age of first-time mothers had risen steadily throughout the 21st century, while fertility has declined. To postpone having children during the last fertile years increases complications, involuntary infertility and the desired number of children might not be realized. Adolescents and adults have no sufficient understanding of the factors affecting preconception health and fertility, but they have lot of misinformation. Professional guidance is needed. Scientists have been discussing in their own circles, but little attention has been paid to concretize the obscurity of the research findings. In the start-up year of this project, international researchers clearly expressed the need to bring knowledge of fertility awareness to young adults, but the health care structures, and professionals’ competences did not support it.

Fertility protection is a critical component in life course health development. Guidance touches on personal choices and must be based on evidence and professionally delivered. Unfortunately, little of Preconception Health and Care (PCHC) content was found in curricula for midwives and nurses in Europe. It was time to bring Lifelong fertility education to a new level by creating tools for educators.

We also found the need to expand the concept of PCHC in three dimensions: to whom, what and when. For years the focus has been on the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. These are important issues, but not enough to protect reproductive health and fertility. Counselling has been aimed at girls and women, but it is equally important to motivate boys and men to protect their fertility. Experts agree that preconception counselling 3 months before pregnancy is too late.

Our objective was to bridge the gap in education: to create the PCHC-model and define the PCHC-competences to guide curriculum development and teaching of health care professionals. Our target was to develop teachers’ competences and skills in teaching PCHC-themes, by collecting all necessary evidence-based information and developing innovative digital teaching materials to be situated in one open access PCHC-platform that allows also flexible possibilities to distance learning.
The result in future will be that new professionals will be equipped for adequate counselling and guidance of their clients. This will bridge the gap between science and clients.
Participants were 5 universities in 4 European countries: TAMK, Finland; VIVES, Belgium; CUAS, Austria; UP and UL; Slovenia.
We had 7 Project Meetings and arranged 5 Multiplier Events. Common meetings were the forum where we created our innovative products, in the meantime participants worked with their chosen topics. Our main work was to review and analyze scientific knowledge and transform it to fit to the end-users.
Covid 19 disrupted and partly hampered the implementation of the project and the organization of activities 2/2020 – 12/2022.

Dissemination of the PCHC-model and other outputs started already in the second meeting/event and continued through the project. First our focus was on health care teachers and students, later adult education, and young adults wherever. Towards the end of the project, we realized that we needed to be more active as part of society. The actors left e.g. to schools to talk and share project outputs. We disseminated the project and its outputs in informal and official contexts in our own universities and through our own national and international contacts, social media, national and international conferences, articles in newspapers, professional and scientific journals.

O1 – We created PCHC-model: Honeycomb-model, which simplifies the complex phenomena and summarizes the factors which effect to fertility. The model is visual and flexible, easy to use in different contexts.
O2 – We built PCHC-Platform (https://preco.tamk.fi), which serves as an open access platform for teaching and learning on different levels of education. All project products, activities and the blog can be found there. Already 44000 visits during the first year
O3 – We made 53 PCHC -e-tools and wrote a comprehensive PCHC-handbook. These products cover the PCHC subject on every level

The project provided a new perspective on the popularization of science and the potential of the digital environment as a part of university teaching. As a result of the project, we made changes to the curricula of midwifery and nursing education and to the teaching the health promotion content. At national and international conferences, many were interested in implementing PCHC ideas into teaching and curricula.
It can be concluded that the PCHC model, e-tools, and handbook crucially developed the competence of project actors in PCHC thinking and teaching. On the other hand, the creation of e-tools and the implementation of the Platform increased the ICT competences of the actors.

Project Website

http://preco.tamk.fi

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 291406,05 Eur

Project Coordinator

TAMPEREEN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY & Country: FI

Project Partners

• KATHOLIEKE HOGESCHOOL VIVES NOORD
• UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI
• FH Kärnten – gemeinnützige Gesellschaft mbH
• UNIVERZA NA PRIMORSKEM UNIVERSITA DEL LITORALE