Parenthood Awareness before Conception to Enhance Offspring Health –Elearning Addressing Lifestyle to Transform Habits” (PACE OF HEALTH) was set up at the initiative of Association for Prenatal Education in Romania, as leading partner from the country with the highest rates of infants death from Europe. The partners for this project are the University for Foreigners of Perugia Italy, Romtens Foundation, and 5 associations, former partners from former 3 European Grundtvig learning partnership projects: the Association Education Prenatale-Information EPI Belgium, Hellenic Prenatal Association, Cyprus Association for Prenatal Education KSPA and Latvian Association for Perinatal Development. All 7 partners cooperated succesfully together during the former ERASMUS + project, PEACE SITE (2017-2019). Their positive experience in working together led them to the conclusion that they want to continue in the same partnership structure providing resources this time for prospective parents. The main objective of the project „PACE OF HEALTH is to raise awareness of young adults to adopt healthier lifestyles prior to conception, for the benefit of maternal and children health, through qualitative e-learning opportunities, training of trainers for community educators and strategies’ proposals for stakeholders in the community, thus adapting WHO recommendations into a more accessible and comprehensive educational form. The PACE OF HEALTH will pursue the following specific objectives : 1. To develop a set of training materials (IO1) containing topics from the agregated WHO guidelines, to support preconception counseling for young people and prospective parents. To be better memorized, the topics are presented under the acronym NEST IN REST: Nutrition, Emotional and mental health, Substance use (to avoid), Tobacco (to avoid), INherited conditions (genetic predisposition) Relationship, Environmental factors, Sexual transmitted diseases (stay away from STI) Trauma (violence prevention) which will be grouped in 7 modules. 2. To train at least 20 trainers among community educators to improve knowledge, skills and attitudes for providing preconception counselling for young adults and couples, based on a a training of trainers community manual (IO2) a toolbox for community educators (IO7). At their turn they will train other peers, health mediators etc. for raising the quality of preconception counseling delivered to prospective parents. 3. To develop a set of digital tools tailored to young generations educational needs: an elearning platform with 7 elearning modules (IO3), 7 white board doodle applications (IO4)-one for each thematic module, a mobile phone application (IO5) and an interactive educational game (IO6) based on the principles of oca games, to raise awareness for preconception care in an original manner. The main activities of the project are: - 4 transnational meetings in Romania, Italy, Cyprus and Greece - 7 Intellectual outputs: 1. IO1 Training materials: the 7 partners will elaborate 7 training modules for 10 topics - the most important provisions of WHO for preconception care: nutrition recommendations (1), emotional and mental balance (2), risk prevention for toxic substances and tobacco (3), STI prevention(4) awareness about genetic conditions (inherited) and environmental factors (5), establishing an harmonious relationship (6) interpersonal violence prevention (7). 2. IO2: Training for Trainers Manual for preconception counseling addressed to community educators. AEPRO will take steps to include the ToT Manual into a national curriculum implemented by the Ministry Health for Integrated Community Services for community nurses, midwives and health mediators. 3. IO3: E-learning platform with 7 e-learning modules which will reach more target groups: young adults, future parents, educators, professionals from the community who accompany prospective parents from before conception, stakehoders. 4. IO4: 7 white board doodle animations, one for each module to enhance the awareness on the subject 5. IO5: mobile phone application for providing awareness and inspirational messages about healthier behaviors 6. IO6: a set if interactive educational games to raise awareness of yang adults for preconception care topics 7. IO7: A Toolbox for educators Ready to use materials to help community educators to implement preconception care into their practice Will be organized 2 training activities, C1 Short-term joint staff training in Italy and C2 training of trainers for community educators for providing preconception counseling in Romania. The partners' cooperation will target the creation of a broad educational portal mainly for on-line training, available in English and all the partners languages in order to provide an international implementation. The partners will take steps to introduce in their national curriculum for community educators training the PACE OF HEALTH products.
The intention (accomplished) was to enhance the quality of information on conception preparation for both parents-to-be and professionals dealing with future parents, teenagers and young people. In this regard, through the PACE OF HEALTH Project we developped a set of training materials (IO1) containing topics from the agregated WHO guidelines,we trained 17 trainers among community educators using a trainers manual (IO2), we developped a set of digital tools tailored to young generations educational needs: an elearning platform with 7 elearning modules (IO3), 7 white board doodle applications (IO4)-one for each thematic module, a mobile phone application (IO5) and an interactive educational game (IO6) based on the principles of oca games, to raise awareness for preconception care in an original manner. The most the most applicable materials for community educators were the toolbox (IO7) containing 18 cards summarizing the main elements of counselling needed in the dialogue with those intending to become parents, from the perspective of the project topics and beyond: Nutrition, Physical activity/Exercise, Hypertension, Diabetes, Relationship, Alcohol, Tobacco, Environment, Violence, Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
Among the partners, the coordinator and other 4 organizations are Associations for prenatal education; their main concern is how to raise the awareness of parents to be, young people, community, professionals, stakeholders, about the importance of conception and pregnancy preparation.Nowadays more and more scientific studies prove that parental environmental factors, including diet, body composition, metabolism, and stress, tobacco and substance use prior conception can influence dramatically the future child health condition, even survival; the obesity of mother and/or father–already a public health problem-have a detrimental impact on fertility and fetal development and can produce programming effects lasting even up to two generations. All these issues have been addressed by the WHO which has developed guidelines for conception and pregnancy preparation.Inspired by the WHO recommendations, we have proposed through the PACE OF HEALTH project, to offer young adults information and educational opportunities to raise their awareness about adopting healthy behaviors prior to conception, to reinforce community educators counseling skills for prospective parents, to sensitize stakeholders to issue strategies and policies in the field.