23^rd -26^th October 2014
EGPRN Conference "Economic Crisis and Research in Primary Care," Heraklion, Crete

An oral presentation was held by Maria Papadakaki: Improving cross-cultural communication in primary health care settings in Greece: The RESTORE project.

30^th October – 2^nd November 2014
17^th National Medical Conference of Greece, Heraklion, Greece

Aristoula Saridaki, one of the Greek Conosortium members, held an oral presentation: The healthcare of migrants in Greece and language barriers they encounter at the primary health care level.

6^th November, 2014
Techological Institute of Crete, Department of Social Work, Heraklion, Greece.

Comunaid Workshop on Migrant Health: Professor Lionis, Maria Papadakaki and Aristoula Saridaki (members of the Greek Team) presented the RESTORE project and conducted a PLA exercise with the participants.

21^st-23^rd November, 2014
8^th National Conference of Public Health and Social Medicine, Thessaloniki, Greece

An oral presentation: "The RESTORE Project; Results and findings in light of the economic crisis of Greece" was presented by Aristoula Saridaki

2^nd - 5^th July, 2014
WONCA 19^th Europe Conference, Portugal

At the 19^th European WONCA-conference in Lisbon, Portugal, a workshop called "Supporting communication in cross-cultural primary care consultations: how to implement guidelines and training initiatives across Europe" has been taken place and was facilitated by representatives of our English (Christopher Dowrick) , Greek (Christos Lionis) and Dutch (Maria van den Muijsenbergh) RESTORE partners. About 50 people from many different countries participated in this workshop.October, 2013

Our second Newsletter has been published and is now available under:
Materials and Media > Newsletter
or directly under:
https://fp7restore.eu/pdf/Newsletter_2_en_Ausf_web.pdf

3^rd August, 2013

A letter was published in "The Lancet".
O'Donnell C, Burns N, Dowrick C, Lionis C, MacFarlane A; RESTORE team.
Health-care access for migrants in Europe. 
Lancet. 2013 Aug 3;382(9890):393.

25^th - 29^th June, 2013
WONCA 20^th World Conference, Prague

The RESTORE-Consortium has been represented with various presentations and workshops at the latest WONCA World conference in Prague, Czech.

 

An oral presentation about the method (PLA) used in RESTORE: 'Using Participatory Learning & Action (PLA) research methodology and techniques in European primary health care research - potential, pragmatics, possibilities?' has been held by Mary O’Reilly-de Brún, Tomas de Brún and Anne MacFarlane from the Irish team.

Tomas de Brún, has also presented a presentation about: 'Mapping examples of guidelines and/or training Initiatives designed to enhance communication in cross-cultural primary care settings in Europe'.

The Greek team has had an oral presentation about: 'Introducing a European project with a focus on migrant care within the primary care setting in a country undergoing the austerity period'.

Maria van den Muijsenbergh, from the Dutch RESTORE-Team,has lead a workshop about the Normalisation Process Theory: 'Implementation of supports for cross- cultural communication: the value of Normalisation Process Theory'.

8^th March, 2013
Annual conference of the Association of University Departments of General Practice in Ireland (AUDGPI), University of Limerick

The key aim of this workshop was to describe an application of (PLA) in European primary healthcare research (RESTORE), and to provide workshop participants with an interactive live demonstration of one of several PLA techniques currently being used in the RESTORE project. Experienced PLA trainer/practitioners have provided workshop participants with opportunities to explore and discuss the use of PLA and its potential application to participant’s own areas of interest.

Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) is an innovative and rigorous action research methodology and approach, has a strong focus on community engagement/user involvement and is appropriate and useful for qualitative and participatory research in primary healthcare. PLA’s innovative qualities are of interest to researchers, academic GPs, project co-coordinators, research trainers and medical educators.

10^th October 2012
Diversity Conference of the Medical University of Vienna
Vienna, Austria

Dr. Wolfgang Spiegel presented the RESTORE project at the Diversity Conference of the Medical University of Vienna. This presentation included information about the specific method and theory of RESTORE, as well as an overview of our completed mapping process, which helped us to identify RESTORE related guidlines and training initiatives in our partner countries. Also the collaboration with Dr. Carmen daSantana was explained to the audience.

2^nd-4^th October, 2012
Society for Academic Primary Care, Annual Conference
Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Dr Nicola Burns presented a poster about RESTORE at the recent joint scientific conference of the Society of Academic Primary Care and the Royal College of General Practitioners, held this year in Glasgow. One of the largest and most prestigious primary care conferences, this was attended by around 1600 delegates. As we can see here, our work attracted interest and debate throughout the session.

4^th-7^th September 2012
European Association for Communication in Healthcare International Conference on Communication in Health care
University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK

Professor Catherine O’Donnell chaired a symposium about Building bridges: "Exploring innovative methods to enhance inter-cultural communication in primary care - a European experience".

(left to right: Prof Anne MacFarlane, Prof Catherine O'Donnell, Assoc Prof Evelyn Van Weel-Baumgarten)

This symposium also included presentations about RESTORE by the Dutch team (Associate Professor Evelyn Van Weel-Baumgarten and Dr Maria van den Muijsenbergh, Radboud University Nijmegen) and Professor Anne MacFarlane (Irish team) along with a presentation from Professor Alison Phipps, College of Arts, University of Glasgow and Dr Ima Jackson, Glasgow Caledonian University about their work on the use of innovative arts and theatre-based methods to develop education and training of practitioners.

3^rd-4^th September, 2012
4^th biannual EFPC - Conference "Crossing Borders in Primary Care”of the European Forum for Primary Care
Gothenburg, Sweden

On behalf of Professor Christos Lionis, Aristoula Saridaki presented the abstract "Enhancing research capacity in family practice in rural Crete, through participation in Interprofessional European fp7 projects" as a policy debate poster at the Future of Primary Health Care in Europe IV "Crossing Borders in Primary Care" Conference organized by the European Forum for Primary Care in Gothenburg Sweden 3-4 September 2012. The purpose of this abstract was to report on the benefits of engaging in FP7 EU European projects to enhance research capacity for improving patient experience at an academic unit of general practice on Crete, Greece.

Aristoula Saridaki

The RESTORE projects’ aims, objectives and methodology were presented. There was much interest in the methodology used and in general the whole concept of the project.

14^th June, 2012
WIDE-event in Galway, Ireland

WIDE means welcome, introduce, describe and establish potential engagement in RESTORE. This is the key activity of Phase 1 fieldwork, May-Sept 2012. During WIDE events, RESTORE researchers engage in Participatory Learning & Action (PLA) research with potential stakeholders.
The first WIDE event held in the National University of Ireland, Galway took place on 14 June 2012. The event was led by Tomas de Brún and the full Irish research team was present (Mary O Reilly de Brun & Prof. Anne Mac Farlane). The event was 2.5 hours duration and was attended by 9 potential stakeholders including GPs, migrants and migrant representatives, a cultural mediator and an interpreter.

PLA techniques were used to discover the main questions that potential stakeholders had. These were then grouped into categories and discussed in the group. Main categories were: Process issues/Time issues/Method questions and questions about what end results might be expected. See below for examples of process questions:

1.Where do migrants come from for the project?

2.Within GP practices, how many migrants? As many as possible? Do we [GPs] pick migrant service users?

3.Any reading materials for us for guidance?

After discussion of questions and conversation about the project we used a PLA form of Likert Scale to ‘take the temperature’ of the group and see how many stakeholders might be interested in proceeding with the project to the next stage.
See below for results:

TEMPERATURE CHART RESULTS
Number of Attendees:	9
HOT (very interested)	5
LUKEWARM (interested but needing more time to consider)	4
COLD (unable or unavailable to continue or be further involved)	0

Other WIDE events took place in Ireland in May and June 2012. The results of all these events will feed into later phases of fieldwork from September to December 2012.

21^st-23^rd June, 2012
4th Conference EUPHA - Facts beyond Figures Milan, Italy - 21-23 June 2012

On behalf of the RESTORE consortium, Professor Anne MacFarlane presented an overview of the RESTORE project at this international conference on migrant health at Bocconi University, Milan on June 22^ndin the session on Health Policies and Management from 16³⁰-18³⁰.

^{Christina Hernaidez Quevedo (Session Chair) and Anne MacFarlane (RESTORE Co-ordinator) at the session on Health Policies and Management.}

The session was chaired by Christina Hernaidez Quevedo from the London School of Economics. There was good interest in the RESTORE project and there was a valuable discussion at the end of the session about challenges to health policy implementation and strategies to overcome these.

23^rd May, 2012

RESTORE Co-ordinator, Professor Anne MacFarlane gave a presentation about ‘Building blocks to a successful EU funding application’ at the Centre for Social Issues at the University of Limerick. The presentation described the ways in which the development of a coherent body of research about migrant health in Ireland from 2002, national funding awards and inter-disciplinary and inter-agency networks were essential for our successful bid for EU FP7 funding for the RESTORE project in 2010-2011.

17^th May, 2012

Professor Anne MacFarlane presented details of the RESTORE project to a group of Galway city general practitioners at their recent end of year Continuing Medical Education Meeting and dinner in the G Hotel Galway, Ireland. General practitioners were invited to attend the forthcoming Welcome Event for RESTORE which is a PLA session designed to provide general practitioners and stakeholders with full details of RESTORE and to explore the scope for their participation in the planned fieldwork.

2010 - 2011
NUI Galway FP7 Presentation

Ms Mary O Reilly-de Brún, Mr. Tomas de Brún and Professor Anne MacFarlane gave a presentation about their experience of working on the RESTORE proposal in 2010-2011. The talk was organised by the NUI Galway Research Office for the College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. The multidisciplinary audience participated in a lively discussions with the presenters about the importance of a strong scientific proposal, effective communication and relationship building within consortium and strategies to master the complexity of management and administration of EU proposals.