The UP Faculty of Health Sciences is participating in the international Erasmus+ project Connected4Health with the focus on eating disorders and obesity in young people. One of its goals is to provide university teachers and lecturers with the knowledge, skills, methods, and tools for a multidisciplinary approach to teaching such topics.
Universities and other institutions from seven European countries are collaborating in the project. Its coordinator is the George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science and Technology of Târgu Mureş, Romania, a partner of the UP Faculty of Health Sciences during the recently completed HELP2 project which focused on improving the language competencies of health professionals. Thanks to this successful collaboration, the Olomouc faculty was invited to participate in the current project.
“The two-year project aims to interlink medical and humanities-based perspectives on the issues of nutritional counselling, obesity, and eating disorders. The first result will be a handbook that will summarise the cultural and historical development of the societal approach to these issues in each of the partner countries. Second, a teaching syllabus will be produced, which will be useful for university curricula and for all those who have a professional interest in obesity or eating disorders. It will provide information from medical disciplines such as diabetology, obesity treatment, and endocrinology, but also from physiotherapy, psychology, and communication studies. The third result will be a set of methodological approaches to navigate effective care for young people with obesity or eating disorders,” said Lukáš Merz from the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities at the UP Faculty of Health Sciences.
In addition to the cultural and historical overview for the Czech Republic and testing of the upcoming methodologies, Olomouc researchers will contribute to the joint work especially in the field of psychology and nutritional therapy. One of the members of the team is Czech nutritionist Hana Střítecká from the Faculty of Military Health Sciences of the University of Defence, who also lectures at the UP Faculty of Health Sciences and the UP Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry.
The results of the project will be continuously published on its website.