RSU gets involved in European Union project to adopt new vaccination practices

The EUVABECO (European Vaccination Beyond Covid) project was launched on 1 January 2024 to create the conditions for a new type of vaccination practice throughout the European Union (EU). Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) is one of the partners in the 2,5-year long project as well as the leader of the expert advisory board group.

Prof. Dace Zavadska, a lecturer at the RSU Department of Paediatrics, is the scientific leader of the project in Latvia and is active in the project's steering group. Doctoral student Kristīne Ozoliņa, a lecturer at the RSU Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, and Ivars Baltus, a project manager at the Development and Project Department are also involved in the project implementation.

‘The Covid-19 crisis has changed vaccination practices around the world, introducing hundreds of innovations that would have otherwise appeared years later.

These practices are usually designed in and tied to their countries of origin, i.e. they have quite a specific legal, technical, organisational, ethical and economic context that allowed them to emerge in the first place,’ explains Prof. Zavadska.

The aim of the EUVABECO project is to provide EU member states with evidence-based and successfully tested good practice implementation plans, so that they can use these plans to introduce the practices discussed in the project or other similar practices that would be important for routine vaccination. These practices would also work across borders and across geographical territories and jurisdictions in the event of a future crisis.

The preparatory work allowed the EUVABECO project to choose five main tools, a basic version of which was already introduced during the Covid-19 crisis. They will be used to develop, test, adapt, verify, and validate plans that will allow any member state to successfully continue their implementation.

The selected tools are:

1. a clinical decision system that provides reasoned recommendations for vaccination;

2. a screening tool to identify and encourage vaccination of vulnerable population groups;

3. an electronic product manual that would allow vaccines to be transferred between countries without the need for repackaging;

4. a modelling and forecasting tool to assess the impact of public health measures;

5. a portable digital vaccination record card to ensure traceability and continuity of care throughout life.

These practice implementation plans will be tested in 12 pilot projects that will be carried out between September 2024 and August 2025 in seven EU Member States: Belgium, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Poland, and Portugal. The results of these pilot projects will then be evaluated against standard vaccination practices so that the finalised plans can be submitted to Member States as early as 2026.

The project is supported by the European Commission assigning co-funding within the EU-Health programme. The project is coordinated by the University of Crete, bringing together 14 partners from nine countries, with a total budget of 8.4 million euros.

The EUVABECO consortium partners are: RSU, Linköping University in Sweden, Saarland University in Denmark, Jagiellonian University and Wroclaw Medical University in Poland, the University of Crete and the University of Thessaly in Greece, Luxembourg eHealth Agency, the Directorate General of Health in Portugal, Sciensano in Belgium, Syadem and Cimbiose in France, and Vaccines Europe and FRATEM from Belgium.

To contact the EUVABECO steering group, please write to coordinationeuvabeco[pnkts]net.

This project has been co-funded by the European Union EU-Health programme in accordance with the grant agreement No 101132545.