Certification of Causes of Death in Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Certification of Causes of Death in Europe

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Open and distance learning; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

The current epidemiological situation proves how the information on causes of death and co-existing health conditions are important for better understanding of health tendencies in our societies and for establishing effective health policies. But the quality of data on causes of death raises deep concerns in several European countries. This is mostly due to individual practices of medical doctors who are unaware of certification rules imposed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and national statistical offices and, when stating the death, fill in death certificates incorrectly or carelessly. In most European countries, students of medical universities devote less than 2 hours (during the whole curriculum) to certification rules, whereas practising medical doctors have few opportunities of improving and updating their skills in filling in death certificates. As a result, in several countries of Europe considerable proportion of deaths is assigned to unknown or ill-defined causes: in 2018 it was 12% in Greece, 25% in Poland, 8% in Portugal.

For several decades now, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been establishing in-detailed recommendations about registering, coding and publishing information on causes of death, which are adopted by most developed countries, therein all EU member states.The proposed project aims at developing new innovative pedagogies that concern the rules of WHO as well as good practices introduced in selected European countries characterised by a relatively high quality of cause-of-death statistics. Its objective is twofold; first, it consists of providing an innovative learning tool (CODA) for lecturers training medical students, giving them the opportunity to improve their knowledge on WHO’s recommendations and rules concerning the certification of causes of death. Second, it creates a MOOC dedicated to trainers and professors of various universities and institutes who wish to adapt the CODA tool for their teaching purposes and share it with their students.

Teaching activities performed within the project include providing e-learning courses to academics (lecturers, professors) at medical universities in Europe, in order to 1) improve their understanding of epidemiological tendencies in ageing populations, with special reference to the mortality by causes of death, 2) show the importance of good quality of mortality statistics for better understanding of epidemiological tendencies and health policy impacts within a population; 3) provide them with the WHO recommendations concerning filling in death certificates; 4) improve their competencies and skills in filling in death certificates, 5) discuss the most frequent causes of death that should not be, according to WHO, used, 6) improve their digital competencies and promote innovative e-learning. Six editions of the course will be dedicated to overall 550 participants, therein approximately 80% represented by the teachers at medical universities, and approximately 20% represented by academics in other domains (i.e. public health, epidemiology, demography) and medical doctors. At the end of the course, each participant will pass an evaluation based on the CODA tool and, if successful, will receive a MOOC Statement of Accomplishment. This will contribute to a better recognition of skills in the domain of medical documentation and WHO’s certification rules.

Subsequently, the participants of the course will be encouraged to create their own MOOC courses based on the CODA tool for their teaching purposes and to share it with their students, the future generations of medical doctors. Thus, the long-term impact consists of improving individual practices in cause-of-death certification, performed by medical doctors, and subsequently, improving the quality of cause-of-death data necessary for efficient health policies.

The impact of the course will not be limited to trainers of medical universities enrolled in the project. We ensure that the educative materials (including CODA) are published, in several language versions (English, French, Greek, Polish, Portuguese), at the European open resource platform for free once the project is finished. Thus, the educative materials will be available to anyone willing to increase the knowledge in recent trends in mortality by causes, as well to improve the competencies in establishing the medical documentation. Also, three multiplier events organised within the project are supposed to sensibilize the wide audience (medical personnel, stakeholders, public opinion) on the importance of good, informative and correct public statistics in ageing societies, as well as to promote the knowledge on current epidemiological tendencies and processes in Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 216910 Eur

Project Coordinator

INSTITUT NATIONAL D’ETUDES DEMOGRAPHIQUES & Country: FR

Project Partners

• CENTRUM MEDYCZNE KSZTALCENIA PODYPLOMOWEGO
• UNIVERSIDADE ABERTA
• PANEPISTIMIO IOANNINON