CityLabs: Towards More Societal Engagement & Inclusion in Medical Practices

11 May 2023

What does it mean to be inclusive in medical practices? What does good engagement of society look like, and what obstacles do we encounter? 

Virtual Meeting Platforms (VMPs) are events that are part of the City Labs of our UNIC Alliance. In our VMPs we bring together people and practices from different cities and universities to tackle challenges that are typical for our post-industrial cities. The objective of the VMP of 16 May is to bring together students and staff of the medical faculties of the various UNIC partner universities, and staff from local NGOs to learn and discuss about Public Health themes related to inclusion.

Global outline of the program

The program consists of two parts. Each part follows this structure:

Each invited speaker shortly introduces his or herself and briefly shares the topic she/he wants to elaborate on in the round table discussion

Round table discussion starts. Guiding questions:

- how does engagement of society and their communities ideally look like?

- what (innovative) practices can be shared/elaborated on?

- how do you encourage this approach internally for colleagues to follow?

- what obstacles/barriers are encountered when doing that?

- what would you like to learn from one of the other UNIC medical faculties?

NGOs, non-profits, and students are welcome to participate! Speakers include: 

Introduction by Samira Abbadi, UNIC

Part I:  Engaged Education and Research (13:05-14:00)  

El Zahra Elkawafi & Naomi Nguyen, (Students and Board members GIDS) Erasmus MC, Stepping out of the ivory towers - making societal impact as a healthcare student

Marianna Bevova, Director GIGA, University of Liège, ‘Good practices of engaged research & education’

Natalie Terzikhan, Erasmus MC, Good practices of engaged research & education

Hasan Bayram, Koç University, ‘The climate crisis & health impacts; what physicians can do’

Angela Flynn, Inclusion Health Research Group, UCC 

Part II: Reach and Inclusion (15:00-16:00)  

Nikki Jansen & Gert Jan Verboom (Dona Daria, local partner in Rotterdam)

Georgios Paslakis, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, ‘Mental Health of LGBT group’

Sam Riedijk, Erasmus MC, DNA dialogues with communities, societal alignment of genetic disruptive technologies

Prof. Kemal Kuşcu, Koç University, ‘Meeting psychosocial needs of communities through Design'

Mary Cronin, Inclusion Health Research Group, UCC 

Nicolas Antoine-Moussiaux, One Health, ULiège

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