Editorial

This edition of the UHCE Newsletter focusses on the dissemination of the learnings of the UHCE project, and how UHCE can contribute to the innovation of pro-active, preventive, integrated care for older citizens in European cities and regions.

The UHCE consortium identified and improved evidence-based interventions (regarding frailty, integrated care pathways, polypharmacy, prevention of falls), and subsequently implemented these intervention is the real-life context of 5 European cities (Rijeka, Croatia; Pallini, Greece; Valencia, Spain; Manchester, UK; Rotterdam, Netherlands). Circa 1250 older citizens were involved in these implementation projects. Their experiences are being compared with those of circa 1250 other older citizens in the same cities who receive ‘usual care’. The UHCE approach is being evaluated in the 5 EU cities/countries regarding process and effects, from the perspective of older citizens and other stakeholders, including reach, implementation integrity, independence, empowerment and health-related quality of life, use-of-care, costs, and appreciation.

Most importantly, in the UHCE project, the experiences gathered during the implementation in five cities, will be integrated and presented to all potential future users in Europe and abroad. A transferable and easily implementable model for UHCE integrated care in EU cities will be developed. This will be organized as an online tool box, which contributes to the Active and Healthy Ageing initiatives in Europe.

The toolbox will provide an overview of formats of collaboration between professional parties within urban health centers. Or, when applicable, the experiences with co-location of the health and social care professionals in urban health centers. The toolbox summarises the UHCE experiences with:

integrated health and social care
a population oriented approach
deployment of nurse practitioners/ physician assistants in urban health centers to provide preventive care
protocols for early detection of frailty
personalised integrated care pathways regarding medical care
prevention of falls, loneliness and management of polypharmacy
how to discuss outcomes of frailty assessments with citizens/patients and their family/carers with shared decision making
available ICT tools that were used at the local level

At this moment, the five pilot cities complete an online survey to summarize their experiences with the UHCE model, especially regarding early detection of frailty and the management of polypharmacy and multifactorial programs of fall prevention integrated in the care pathways. In this Newsletter the first experiences and proposals for the future are being discussed with you.

On Thursday 18 May 2017, the UHCE consortium invites European stakeholders (citizens, professionals, researchers, policy makers) to discuss the results of the UHCE project. The purpose will be to use the learnings in order to enhance future pro-active, preventive, integrated care for older citizens in European cities and regions. Hopefully see you on 17 thru 19 May 2017 in Brussels.