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The conference, organized by the EpiChron research group led by Alexandra Prados, puts the finishing touch to the eight-year research work
"The strategies that we must use must seek to ensure that people in chronic situations receive care from a proactive system," said the Minister of Health.
The number of people who suffer from more than one chronic disease does not stop growing. The rapid increase in these cases is already considered one of the main Public Health challenges that society faces. Addressing their treatment from a global point of view and also taking into account the interests of the patient themselves is the central theme on which the Third International MULTIPAP Conference revolves, which has brought together more than a hundred health professionals, researchers, experts and patients in Zaragoza and whose inauguration was attended by the Minister of Health, Sira Repollés.
«Living under conditions of multimorbidity is living with a continuous worsening of the quality of life, a greater probability of premature mortality, polypharmacy, a high economic burden, a higher rate of adverse events and use of primary and secondary health services» , has assured the head of Health. «The strategies that we must employ must seek to ensure that people in chronic situations receive care from a proactive system, in a comprehensive and integrated manner, continuous and adapted to their needs, with a greater role and responsibility in the management of their own health» , has added.
The conference, organized by the EpiChron research group led by Dr. Alexandra Prados, puts the finishing touch to the research work that they have been carrying out for eight years together with scientists and healthcare professionals from Andalusia and Madrid, but also from countries such as Italy, England, Sweden or Germany, among others.
Through two consecutive clinical trials, called MULTIPAP and MULTIPAP Plus, they have shown that it is possible to improve the approach to this population group and adapt treatments to the characteristics and preferences of the patients themselves. Among other issues, the need to reduce the volume of medication they receive has been determined and that, in that decision, the patient is always involved.
Alexandra Prados, researcher at the Aragonese Institute of Health Sciences and the Aragon Health Research Institute, has highlighted the importance of this international project which, in addition to studying what the health reality is, has made it possible to create training resources aimed at health professionals. .
In the words of Prados, “good training of healthcare professionals is essential and that is why the eMULTIPAP program has been developed, which attempts to provide professionals with sufficient knowledge to address the complexity of treating these patients.”
It should be noted that these trials are supported by the Carlos III Health Institute and are included in the priority line of RICAPPS, the Research Network on Chronicity, Primary Care and Health Promotion in which researchers from 12 autonomous communities participate.
More than 500 professionals from the National Health System, more than 60 researchers have participated in MULTIPAP, and there has been the collaboration of a thousand patients, who have been followed up over the last eight years.
By way of context, in Aragon alone, the vast majority of those over 65 years of age and up to 15% of the child population suffer from multimorbidity.
About the day
The International MULTIPAP Conference, which welcomes experts from several countries around the world, is the third time it has been organized, after being held in Andalusia and Madrid, and with it positive results of the tests carried out are presented. It has two different parts. This Thursday was dedicated to the most informative part and open to the entire population, in which the writer Irene Vallejo, salutes this line of research and work with the video “The tapestry of care”, Rafael Huertas, researcher at the Superior Council of CSIC Scientific Research, and a round table in which multimorbidity has been addressed from the perspective of the different actors, including healthcare workers, managers and patients.
On the other hand, this Friday the last session will take place, focused on healthcare workers, in which the different aspects of training in multimorbidity will be addressed and, on the other hand, what are the great advances and future priority lines in the field Of the investigation.
This Conference is organized by the Aragonese Institute of Health Sciences, the Aragón Health Research Institute and the Miguel Servet University Hospital, in addition to the RICAPPS. It has been financed by the Carlos III Health Institute, Ministry of Science and Innovation and co-financed by the European Union –NextGenerationEU.
About EpiChron
EpiChron is a research group of the Spanish National Health System focused on chronic diseases and multimorbidity with a clinical and public health focus.
Investigates the nature, evolution and impact of chronic diseases and multimorbidity in the population. In addition, it advances in the design of principles and models of care and the evaluation of the effectiveness of person-centered interventions, specifically created for the management of multimorbidity in the National Health System.
Its lines focus on understanding and characterizing the determinants, patterns and trajectories in multimorbidity; in the identification of high-risk patient groups; in measuring the impact on health outcomes and evaluating the effectiveness of implementing good practices, or in the design of health care models for populations with multimorbidity.
