Event highlights
2 May 2024
The Behavioural and Cultural Insights (BCI) Unit and the WHO Office on Quality of Care and Patient Safety in Athens, Greece, develop shared understanding of each other’s fields of work and identify areas for collaboration.
The BCI Unit and the Athens Office are cross-cutting functions within WHO/Europe with a shared focus on people-centred perspectives, equity and innovation. The behaviours of health and care workers and patients are essential to quality of care and patient safety. These are often complex behaviours that call for evidence-based approaches to positive change.
Five members of the BCI Unit and 15 people from the Athens Office attended the 2-day workshop to map strategic areas where joint activities can be initiated or strengthened. They identified several specific areas, including:
- streamlining BCI into quality of care and public health reform;
- supporting the development of national BCI strategies;
- initiating joint projects with technical units and national health authorities (for example, related to antimicrobial resistance and hospital-acquired infections, social prescribing of arts for mental health, hospital-based interventions for increased breastfeeding, and more effective emergency services); and
- joint integrated trainings, advocacy and capacity-building, including through country community-of-practice initiatives.
Event notice
12 march 2024
The WHO Athens Quality of Care and Patient Safety (QoC) Office and the Behavioural and Cultural Insights (BCI) Unit at WHO/Europe are holding a 2-day joint workshop in Athens, Greece from 12–13 March. The workshop aims to foster collaboration and strategic alignment between the 2 teams to enhance the quality of care and patient safety.
With both BCI and QoC serving as enabling functions in advancing health-care objectives set by national health authorities and disease-specific programmes, this collaborative effort seeks to explore synergies and opportunities for joint advocacy and partnerships. QoC is dedicated to improving health-care standards, including through clinical practice, education and information, and quality improvement methods and tools. The BCI approach enables health-related behaviours through exploring barriers and drivers, addressing these, and evaluating the impact of interventions.
The meeting aims to achieve the following objectives:
- create a shared understanding of the synergies between BCI and QoC;
- map and identify strategic and concrete opportunities where BCI can be a lever for quality of care:
- identify opportunities for joint advocacy, increased visibility, and partnerships; and
- plan next steps to initiate joint work.
The workshop will be attended by approximately 30 participants from the BCI Unit and WHO Athens Office.
For more information, please reach out to romanoun@who.int (QoC) or euinsights@who.int (BCI).