The BIHSENA project is designed to respond to a profound lack of education opportunities in the interdisciplinary area of health, innovations and society in the two countries of Russia and Ukraine, and to bridge a gap between (bio)medical and social scientists, academics and practitioners in these two countries as well as between local and international communities. The need for such education and interdisciplinary/cross-sectorial engagements is urgent against the background of healthcare systems transformation and attempts to find innovative solutions for persisting health problems in the Eastern European neighbouring areas this project focuses on.Consortium members will develop relevant curricula:-Master specialization in ‘Innovations for Health’ and a preparatory course ‘Social studies of innovation’ in Russia -Post-graduate programme for medical professionals ‘Healthcare governance’, course ‘Introduction to health systems’ and course ‘Interdisciplinary epidemiology’ in Ukraine-Open online courses jointly developed and run by consortium members ‘Bridging medical and societal perspectives’ and ‘Health governance: cases from post-communist countries'During the work on the curriculum development, teaching staff from Ukrainian and Russian universities will receive training in student-centred education, use of ICT and English language; recent insights into complexities of health, innovations and society will be shared and discussed. As a result, education opportunities will be created, adequately preparing professionals to work for citizens' health under conditions of rapid technological change and increasing need for interdisciplinarity and internationalisation.The project team will also organize open events on the topics in health, medicine and society. These events will bring together scholars and practitioners of various disciplines and fields and will contribute to establishing a cross-sectorial dialogue.

The objective of INNOVA4TB is to enhance and strengthen the collaborative research among sectors and to form a network aimed to perform high-quality and translational research in the field of diagnosis and management of tuberculosis (TB). The consortium is constituted by 12 institutions from 8 countries that combine complementary and synergic expertise: clinical management (hospitals), basic science and new technologies (academic institutions), and industrial development and entrepreneurship culture (SMEs). The exchanges between the institutions allow the participants to progress in their career perspectives. TB is one of the major infectious diseases worldwide, and the emergence and spread of drug resistant cases is a public health threat. However, the conventional methods used for diagnosis and drug-susceptibility testing are not enough for controlling the disease. In addition, all TB patients, independently of their age, gender, severity of the disease and type of responsible strain, follow the same treatment duration (up to 20 months in drug resistant cases), which often leads to high frequency of adverse events, suboptimal adherence to treatment, and poor outcome. A transition from programmatic to personalized management of TB is needed. Our proposal will develop innovative technologies and approaches in order to improve the individual risk assessment for TB development, to rapidly diagnose active TB, to detect the drug susceptibility of the strain, to design tailor-made therapies, and to use biomarkers to guide and individualize the duration of antimicrobial therapy. This is of great importance for improving the quality of life of patients and ensuring treatment success, as well as for economic reasons for the healthcare system.

<< Background >>Despite the importance of the subject of drop-out, there are little researches about success and drop-out pathways in Vocational Education and Training, while there are many studies centred on other educational levels. Results from available reports suggest that the main body of recommendations are focused on advising and counselling of students while the recommendations aimed at changing the institutional environment and organization and the teaching staff competencies and characteristics are of less concern.Within the European Union, 5.6 million young people (18-24) in Europe are drop-outs youth. Without the shield from unemployment that is education (ILO 2018), there are 5.6 Million young people at heightened risk of poor participation in the labour market and social exclusion over their entire life course. Exposing 13.5% of all young people in this age group to this increased risk is not only an immense waste of the individual potential of young people but also has serious social and economic consequences for our societies. Regarding vocational education, the rate of drop-out is higher and many of the drop-out coming from disadvantaged strata of the society; immigrant background, minorities such as Roma, rural families and other groups (CEDEFOP). However, both available research and the study carried out by the partners shows that until now elaborated methods and actions are focused on the situation when the VET student already developed a pattern for drop-out and has come far in the process. Most of the methods and activities are implemented as temporary actions and have not been incorporated in the continuous quality system of VET schools. The European Commission elaborated the European Quality Assurance for Vocational Education and Training (EQAVET) which consist of 10 indicators for quality excellence. Indicator 8 Prevalence of vulnerable groups addresses Inclusion and diversity and prevention of drop-out. The project EQAVET-4-INCLUSION addresses one of the main priority of the Erasmus program, namely Inclusion and diversity in all fields of education, by promoting social inclusion of people with fewer opportunities, including people with disabilities and people with a migrant background, as well as people living in rural and remote areas, people facing socio-economic difficulties. Within vocational education, the project address the priority “Improving quality assurance in vocational education and training”. To achieve it the project will develop a self-assessment tool for VET providers to measure the level of their readiness for preventing drop-out as a part of their quality monitoring and continuous quality improvement. The tool will be based on indicator 8 in EQAVET. Further the project will elaborate training curriculum for all staff at VET providers regarding the inclusion of the tool in the quality cycle of their school. This will enable a VET school to create a common understanding and approaches to measures for the prevention of drop-out with regards to evaluation and review of taken action. Both the tool and the training curriculum will be included in the already platform of “EQAVETin Practice” (developed by this partnership) which is approved by the European Commission (EQAVET secretariat) and promoted by EQAVET national reference points in all EU member states.<< Objectives >>The project EQAVET-4-INCLUSION aims to enable vocational schools to elaborate a holistic approach to inclusiveness and prevention of drop-out by including these two aspects in their quality assurance system according to EQAVET:-Providing them with training curricula (KIT) for creation of a common view and approach on their quality assurance by using EQAVET framework, especially about inclusion and prevention of drop-out-Providing them with a tool for self-assessment of these two aspects based on EQAVET-Methods for evaluating strength and weaknesses in their present measures-Methods for review and improvement of concrete actions for prevention of drop-out-Capitalise on existing best practicesBy using the EQAVET which is a common European approach to quality in VET, the VET school will be able to compare and have an exchange of experiences and best practices with regards to inclusion and prevention of drop-out. By incorporating the tool and the training curriculum in the already approved “EQAVETin Practice”, the project facilitates-Fast and wide dissemination among VET school (already over 700 VET school use the platform for self-assessment in quality review)-Reaching national stakeholders since all National Reference Points are members of EQAVET and promoting of “EQAVETin Practice” and thereby a common framework for prevention of drop-out in vocational education.<< Implementation >>There will be five (5) results of the projects will beIO1. Guidelines in form of a handbook for school concerning setting up structure for inclusiveness and prevention of dropouts. The structure will define Special working groups on drop-out are set up under the responsibility of the School Director. The above-mentioned working groups include teachers, school management officers and guidance counsellors. IO 2. Elaboration of online EQAVET quality assessment tool for continuous self-assessment for VET schools. The purpose of this tool is to support Vocational Education and Training -institutes (VET) by to incorporates the European Quality Assurance Reference Framework (EQAVET) The aim of the tool is to assess where VET school present measures for prevention of drop-out – The Quick Scan is a user-friendly interactive online tool that consists of short questions addressing inclusion and prevention of drop-out and the results are presented in the form of spider graph.IO3: EQAVET4INCLUSION training curricula for vocational school’s staff - The training curricula will be developed in a form of a distance course though Moodle open source. The structure of the course will be modular, where most of the training will be carried out at distance digitally. The expected result is that acquired knowledge can be directly implemented in practice as the trainees will get concrete tasks for gradual integration of EQAVET4INCLUSION guidelines concept into their daily work.IO4. Validation of handbook and the self assessment tool - The drafted guidelines and the self assessment will be tested and validated by trained schools’ teachers with regards to selected VET programs preferably programs with high drop-out rates. Review by whole school staff and social organisations connected to school.IO5. Development of policy recommendation for local/regional authorities – the recommendations will cover areas a) Support the creation of a regional recommendations on strategy for Dropout Prevention to serve as a central resource for information about best practices. b) Implement dropout prevention strategies VET education and provide early warning systems to identify students at the highest risk of dropping out.<< Results >>The major expected outcomes of the project will be:1. A framework for detection and prevention of drop-out for vocational schools and institution. Drop-out is most often the result of a combination of personal, educational, social, economic, and family-related factors. The elaborated framework provides the VET provider an explanation of various preventive measures such as a) Attendance Tracking and Monitoring b) Transfer Programc) Out-of-School Program d) Mentoring Program e) Learning Support Program f) Social and Personal development Program and g) Parental Program.2. The framework will provide guidance regarding prevention, intervention, and compensation. Prevention guidance will comprise measures to identify students in risk zone, define theirneeds, and, through cross-sectoral cooperation, prevent them from dropping out of school.Intervention comprises measures to re-motivate and re-engage students that have decided to drop out to change their mind to stay by provision of flexible, individually tailored educational methods and solutions including apprenticeship, and outdoor education.3. Including prevention of drop-out in VET institution’s quality system to emphasis the inclusion aspect of VET education. This will be achieved by elaboration of a time and resources saving tool for monitoring and evaluation tool for actions a provider introduces to prevent drop-out. It will be presented in form of the quality EQAVET quality cycle (planning, implementation, evaluation, and review). There will be five (5) results of the projects will be:IO1. Guidelines in form of a handbook for school concerning setting up structure for inclusiveness and prevention of dropouts. The structure will define Special working groups on drop-out are set up under the responsibility of the School Director. The above-mentioned working groups include teachers, school management officers and guidance counsellors. IO 2. Elaboration of online EQAVET quality assessment tool for continuous self-assessment for VET schools. The purpose of this tool is to support Vocational Education and Training -institutes (VET) by to incorporates the European Quality Assurance Reference Framework (EQAVET) The aim of the tool is to assess where VET school present measures for prevention of drop-out – The Quick Scan is a user-friendly interactive online tool that consists of short questions addressing inclusion and prevention of drop-out and the results are presented in the form of spider graph.IO3: EQAVET4INCLUSION training curricula for vocational school’s staff - The training curricula will be developed in a form of a distance course though Moodle open source. The structure of the course will be modular, where most of the training will be carried out at distance digitally. The expected result is that acquired knowledge can be directly implemented in practice as the trainees will get concrete tasks for gradual integration of EQAVET4INCLUSION guidelines concept into their daily work.IO4. Validation of handbook and the self assessment tool - The drafted guidelines and the self assessment will be tested and validated by trained schools’ teachers with regards to selected VET programs preferably programs with high drop-out rates. Review by whole school staff and social organisations connected to school.IO5. Development of policy recommendation for local/regional authorities – the recommendations will cover areas a) Support the creation of a regional recommendations on strategy for Dropout Prevention to serve as a central resource for information about best practices. b) Implement dropout prevention strategies VET education and provide early warning systems to identify students at the highest risk of dropping out.

This project aims the elaboration of the policy of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine on enhancing the third mission of Ukrainian Universities and fostering best practices of cooperation between HEIs and communities based on the application of the relevant experiences of EU states (Italy, Germany, Sweden, Czech Republic and Latvia). A set of activities is developed focusing on enhancing universities’ social role and boosting university-community engagement incorporating efficient models of interaction between the communities and universities developed to ensure social cohesion, resilience and sustainability.The project activities include the development of policy options on enhancing the third mission of universities in Ukraine based on actual research of approaches towards governance models of universities’ third missions; in-depth analysis of community and universities needs in Eastern, Northern, Southern, and Western Ukraine; capacity-building for Ukrainian HEIs staff through the development of professional exchange program focusing on such important aspects of the community-university cooperation as resilience, sustainability, inclusion, entrepreneurship and environment, public health, and social cohesion, development and piloting of concepts of university-community cooperation at Ukrainian partner HEIs and development a policy paper and roadmap on state policy on enhancing the cooperation between communities and universities.The main project results are: Guidelines for the Ministry of Education on University Third Mission; a research paper “Models of the Community-University Cooperation in Ukraine”, 3 workshops on research methodology, intra-consortium mobilities aiming to study and share the best practices in partner institutions, 3 roundtables and focus groups on the third mission of universities with MESU, Ministry of Regional Development of Ukraine, communities and other stakeholders; development and piloting of national models of uni