The COVID-19 outbreak underlines various weaknesses in our society, and this is particularly true for the health sector. In May 2020, the European Commission has mobilised a call as part of the Coronavirus Global Response Initiative to fight the pandemic and to improve understandings of the behavioural and socio-economic impacts of the outbreak.
In light of this development, we are delighted to announce that EUREGHA will be teaming up with 31 partner organisations to implement PERISCOPE, a new HORIZON 2020 project. PERISCOPE stands for “Pan-European Response to the Impacts of COVID-19 and future Pandemics and Epidemics”. This project aims to understand the social, economic, behavioural and mental health-related aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The project, launched in November 2020, will run for three years.
PERISCOPE will contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the COVID-19 outbreak, through multi-disciplinary research, both theoretical and experimental. The project will take into account different aspects such as the epidemiologic, humanistic, psychological, socio-economic and political, statistical and technological point of view.
A broad range of partners will use this opportunity to map and analyse the unintended impacts of the outbreak and work on innovative solutions to lend a hand to policymakers and health authorities. It will support European Member States to boost their preparedness for similar challenges in the future by reflecting on all the domains that were altered by the recent events.
EUREGHA will be part of this strategic project and will contribute to the outcomes of several work packages. We will work on a detailed overview of existing evidence on health system preparedness, accompanied by a comprehensive assessment on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on health systems, which will lead to the identification of gaps and successful policy measures. Moreover, training modules will be designed and implemented which will be tested with health authorities. Throughout the project, EUREGHA will assist in the dissemination and communication of the project to policy-makers, stakeholders and the wider audience.
We are looking forward to further inform you about the developments that will take place. In the meantime, we invite you to take a look at the press release and follow the social media accounts of PERISCOPE.
