Raising awareness and understanding of the importance of COVID-19 prevention in patients with underlying conditions from Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and North Macedonia

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AWARE-PreCOV19 (“Raising awareness and understanding of the importance of COVID-19 prevention in patients with underlying conditions from Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and North Macedonia”) is a one-year project to be implemented by the Centre for Innovation in Medicine (coordinator), together with the Bulgarian Joint Cancer Network, FEMINA M Association, and Renasterea Foundation (as partners).

The AWARE-PreCOV19 Project’s main goal is to increase awareness of the impact of underlying medical conditions and other risk factors in certain population groups living in Romania, Bulgaria, the Republic of Moldova, and North Macedonia, who are at risk of developing severe outcomes of COVID-19, by informing on these topics based on the understanding of barriers that these people face when choosing to take preventive actions for COVID-19 and for their health overall.

Actions and objectives:

Select patients organizations/advocacy groups in each country of the project and deploy questionnaires to patients and caregivers, to better understand the barriers against Covid-19 prevention and their risk profile

Study the existing evidence regarding COVID-19 risk in specific populations and best practices models, extract and summarize the results

Based on the findings from O1-2, develop personalized communication campaigns addressing the barriers and providing guidance when dealing with a COVID-19 diagnosis, as well as engage in webinars with clinicians/medical staff that treat/highly influence those patients

During the webinars, which will feature a great diversity of speakers, targeted questions to asses the medical staff's awareness of specific topics and their level of engagement with the patients will be addressed

Measure again via questionnaires how the attitudes of the patients/caregivers changed after the communication campaigns

Develop a dedicated online page for the project, featuring questionnaires in the languages of the consortium and information resources

COVID-19 information

Central and Eastern European countries were hit harder by the Covid-19 pandemic. Romania and Bulgaria have the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates in the European Union. Despite the efforts of the European Commission, the research community, and the pharma industry that made the vaccines equally available in all EU Member States, the countries barely reached 40% vaccination rates with 2 doses. The same 40% rate was also experienced by countries such as Moldova and North Macedonia, which received the COVID-19 vaccines later through different mechanisms. Due to the low vaccination rate, the low performance of the health systems, and the poor health of the populations, the impact of the pandemic in these countries was huge. On top of these underlying factors, the consequences of the public health emergency struck at many levels and were directly and indirectly influenced by (1) poor communication campaigns and transparency, influenced by political topics and lack of trust in the government; (2) low adherence to non-pharmacological individual protective measures; (3) low testing, diagnostic and reporting capacity.

The AWARE-PreCOV19 Project’s main goal is to increase awareness of the impact of underlying medical conditions (e.g. cancer, autoimmune disease, neurological disease, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes) and other risk factors in certain population groups living in Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and North Macedonia, who are at risk of developing severe outcomes of COVID-19, by informing and communicating on these topics based on the understanding of barriers that these people face when choosing to take preventive actions for COVID-19 and for their health overall.

The project follows a four-step-wise approach, aiming to first understand the patients’ and caregivers' reality by using online questionnaires, engaging with their attending physicians and medical professionals, developing targeted communication campaigns based on the findings, and making the knowledge available through an online platform.

The main outcome of the project consists of raising awareness of the impact of COVID-19 and prevention measures both among patients and caregivers, as well as among healthcare professionals; the Project is acting as an enabler of dialogue between the two groups.

Questionnaire

The below questionnaire represents one of the first steps to ensure the understanding of the people’s needs when it comes to COVID-19 information in relation to their existing disease, as well as the impact the SARS-CoV-2 infection had at the individual level.

By completing this questionnaire, you consent to the AWARE-PreCOV19 Consortium managing the data provided (anonymously) in line with the GDPR law and practices. No data will be used or transferred to third parties outside the Consortium.

Please bear in mind that the purpose of the questionnaire is to be able to understand your needs in relation to your health and COVID-19 and later to be able to provide targeted information that will be made available on the Social Media channels of the Consortium, as well as their websites, in native languages.

Contact us at: [email protected]