Launched in 2015, the Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) is appraising the differing models of child healthcare that are used across Europe. This project, which aims to advise policy making and help every child benefiting from optimum healthcare, will be finalised end of 2018.

AER & the MOCHA project

Within this project, AER belongs to the External Advisory Board. Right from the start AER therefore set up a Focus Group on Child Health Care under the leadership of Dr Marta Tatar which aimed at following the project closely and channel findings to AER members in a continuous way. In this context the Focus Group met on the occasion of the 2016 Spring plenaries in Timis (RO) to hear about the ambitions of the MOCHA project and how the consortium would be operating to evaluate the different models of child health care in Europe.

As a result of its engagement in the project, AER was able to provide feedback on findings from the consortium and develop its network of potential project partners. AER Coordinator for Policy & Knowledge Transfer Johanna Pacevicius participated in the MOCHA annual general meeting and the advisory board meeting in Riga on 23-26 October 2017 to contribute to the project’s work and gather content for the work of the AER Committees.

The participation in MOCHA prove instrumental in the AER work on health innovation ecosystems. MOCHA researchers have contributed to several AER events and activities, in particular:

• A workshop on stakeholder mapping for the developement of health innovation ecosystems was conducted during the AER autumn plenaries in Izmir (TR), together with Prof. Mitch Blair, project coordinator, from the Imperial College of London ;
• Prof Michael Rigby spoke about “The Informal and Formal Virtual Care Team – Consent, Trust and Enablement in a Digital World” during the 2017 Artic Light E-health Conference  in Nordbotten (S).
• AER organised a workshop on harnessing the potential of social capital for integrated care systems together with Prof Michael Rigby at the ALEC 2017 conference.
• AER members exchanged with Dr Paul Kocken and Dr Maria Brenner on youth mental health in the framework of the development of an interregionnal project on this topic.

In 2017 AER published an update on the progress of the MOCHA project, one year later it is time to look at achievements.

Gathering & analysing data on child healthcare

During its second year of research, the MOCHA consortium started to gather and analyse their initial results on a variety of topics such as:

• E-Health Policy for Children
• Integration of health and social care for children with complex health conditions
• Harmonisation of child health care in Europe
• Child Migrant Health Policy
• Measurement of the Strength of Children’s Primary Care
• Equity in primary care health systems for children
• Innovative measures of quality of care and outcomes of child primary care models

This was a particularly busy, fascinating and complex time, as they began to disseminate their initial findings, in numerous conferences and events and test theories with a number of different stakeholder groups. Primary care services for children are multidisciplinary, ever changing and very much based in the communities they serve. The project’s work packages are therefore working in multidisciplinary ways in order to really understand the different health systems in the European Union and EEA countries. At the same time, the MOCHA team have been discussing how these results are shaping the project’s ultimate aim of appraising the models of primary care to children.

Now in the final months of the project, the focus is on organising and analysing the results, not least the vast amount of data received from the MOCHA country agents. The consortium is also working on identifying health outcome measures to compare with the project results, and wrestling with the inevitable data challenges that anyone working on children’s public health will be familiar with.

The MOCHA team is already busy developing conclusions and disseminating results as well as forming productive relationships with other EU projects and the World Health Organisation, to spread the knowledge learnt in MOCHA to benefit primary care for children, and ultimately improve children’s health.

The newsletter from March 2018 presents in particular an E-Book showcasing conditions for implementation of examples of best practices in primary child health care in European countries.

Final conference

The final MOCHA conference will take place in the Hague (NL) on 15-16 November 2018. This concluding event will share the headline results, introduce the formal reports, and enable stakeholder discussion on next steps after the project’s conclusion. This will include presentations on key MOCHA findings:

• Invisibility of Children in Data and Policy Systems
• Measurement Challenges
• Listening to Young People
• Vulnerable Children and Equity
• Delivering Complex Care
• Patients and Primary Care Interfaces
• School and Adolescent Health Services
• Health Workforce in Child Health
• Education of the Child Health Workforce
• E-Health as the Enabler
• Optimal Service Models

The way forward for primary child healthcare Health in Europe will require understanding child-centricity, as well as bringing MOCHA results to local services and contextualising into European and Professional Initiatives

For more information about this project, visit the MOCHA webpage on the AER website or the official MOCHA  project website. It is also possible to subscribe to the MOCHA newsletter or consult previous newsletters. The project’s publications also provide invaluable insights on the different topics researched and the consortium’s findings.