The Kick-Off Meeting of this Erasmus+ Ka2 Cooperation Partnerships led by the University of Bologna (Prof. Katia Mattarozzi) took place on 25 and 26 January in Madrid
On 25 and 26 January, the Kick-off Meeting of the PANACEA project took place in Madrid.
The 2-day meeting set the foundation of the project. During the Kick-off Meeting, the project structure and plan were discussed along with the dissemination plan. More specifically, the partners discussed the first activities to be implemented such as the practice- and evidence-based content collection as well as the WebApp functional analysis. Moreover, transversal activities such as project management and risks, project evaluation and quality assurance were analysed. The partners then concluded the Kick-off Meeting with a to-do list in view of the next meeting in Leuven.
The new Erasmus+ PANACEA project led by the University of Bologna aims to increase the knowledge of young doctors, researchers and health professionals on the mechanisms underlying placebo and nocebo effects, and thus provide indications and evidence for their use in clinical practice.
During their training, students and specializing doctors usually approach placebo effects as a control measure but are not taught about the importance of recognising and mitigating nocebo effects. Therefore, in order to achieve better therapeutic outcomes, a better knowledge of placebo/nocebo effects must be developed based on scientific evidence. The aim of the partnership is indeed:
1) to provide shared European guidelines for the optimal use of placebo effects and for identifying and mitigating nocebo effects in clinical practice;
2) to create a syllabus of a course on placebo/nocebo effect that is applicable in medical education in Europe.
This innovative learning pathway aims at offering unique opportunities in the clinical setting:
1) to provide information and feedback on placebo/nocebo effects in clinical practice
2) to promote empirical, conceptual and ethical understanding of the placebo/nocebo effect among future physicians, academic researchers and healthcare professionals.
This Erasmus+ Ka2 Cooperation Partnership has the Una Europa Alliance as associate partner together with the Italian Society of General Medicine (SIMG), the College of Family Physicians in Poland, and the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies (SIPS). The partner organisations participating in the project are: University of Bologna (Prof. Katia Mattarozzi) -Coordinator, Universiteit Leiden (Prof. Andrea Evers), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Prof. Johan W.S. Vlaeyen), Universidad Complutense De Madrid (Prof. Antonio Portoles), Uniwersytet Jagiellonski (Prof. Przemyslaw Babel, Dott. Marek Oleszczyk), European Pain Federation - EFIC (Mary O'Keefe), RE2N S.r.l. (Alberico Tremigliozzi).