Profile & mission

Vision

We help to disseminate the culture and practice of health prevention and promotion and we support actions for their sustainable development.

Mission

We provide access to robust and up-to-date documentation of the efficacy of public health projects and interventions through the Health in All Policies approach. We facilitate processes of knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE). We provide data, scientific evidence, regulations, models and tools, good practices and training courses for planning, managing, and evaluating health prevention and promotion interventions with an equity focus.

Mandate

We provide Piedmont regional government and Local Health Units with the necessary scientific, methodological, and legal support for health promotion and prevention actions and strategies. In addition, we help decision makers and health practitioners to improve their skills through:

• Participation in work groups and local, regional, and international networks and projects
• Translation, summarizing, and adaptation of documentation
• Dissemination of social marketing and health communication strategies
• Database creation and management
• Evaluation of projects and good practices
• Training and continuing professional education in health prevention and promotion
• Management of a specialist periodicals library

Principles/Values

Our guiding principles are:

• The principles of scientific transparency and independence, as we belong to no organization with vested interests that could bias our activities.
• The recommendations outlined in the Ottawa Charter (1986) and the Shanghai Declaration promoting health in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the WHO/Europe Health 2020 strategy.
• Core competencies and professional standards for health promotion practitioners required by the accreditation system CompHP. Developing competencies and professional standards for health promotion capacity building in Europe (International Union for Health Promotion and Education - IUHPE, 2012)

Target Audience

Our target audience is composed of people interested in individual and community health and well-being, particularly the stakeholders working at:

• Piedmont regional government and local authorities
• Local health units and hospitals
• Ministry of Health and the Istituto Superiore di Sanità
• Regional and local school officers and schools of all levels
• Universities and research institutes
• Third sector agencies

WORK AREAS

Documentation

We provide users with knowledge and experience in the search for scientific evidence, factual data and legislation on health promotion and prevention topics. We assist users in formulating research questions, select the best evidence and analyze it. We support the activities of the Regional Health Prevention Plan with regard to documentation, we manage a specialist library and we train health professionals on privacy norms, the use of biomedical databases and factual data, and on evidence-based health promotion and prevention.

We manage the MATline database on cancerogenic agents and the Pro.Sa database on health promotion and prevention interventions, in collaboration with the area dealing with the support in plans and projects design.

Our activities aim to develop and experiment with methods and tools for sharing and exchanging evidence with different types of target audiences: health promotion professionals, stakeholders, and decision makers.

Communication

We provide users with skills and experience in health promotion and prevention communication. Our services include:

• Training and consultancy for public health professionals on health communication
• Creating workshops on Social Marketing
• Curation of the Dors editorial line
• Translation and summarizing of international documents
• Participation at events and conferences
• Management of Dors coordinated image

We manage Dors website (www.dors.it), the showcase for the Center’s activities and a regional-national channel for dissemination of documentation, projects, reviews, and quality data. In addition to managing the website, we also curate the content of the monthly electronic newsletter.

Since 2011 we are part of the Social Marketing Communication Network.

Support in plans and project design

We are a group of professionals with a background in the humanities and medicine. We provide consultancy and methodological support in designing plans, programs, and projects, in addition to creating workshops and training courses for health professionals and decision makers in different sectors. A characteristic of our approach is co-designing with the client, using learner-centered methodology, debate and peer evaluation.

Consistent with the subjects and models of health promotion and prevention and well-being, our activities involve:

• Providing support to the Regional Prevention Council (Coordinamento Operativo Regionale [CORE]) and other regional groups as foreseen by the Regional Prevention Plan
• Planning and evaluation of educational projects and courses
• Development of the Pro.Sa database in collaboration with other areas
• Evaluation of projects and interventions as examples of good practice
• Search for useful documentation (evidence, methods, tools, and good practices) that is then adapted to meet the informational, decisional, and educational needs of professionals, decision makers, and other stakeholders
• Collaboration on the redaction of projects to be presented for funding requests.

We collaborate with Piedmont regional government, Local Health Units and hospitals, and other organizations throughout the region (Regional School Office, University of Turin, associations) and outside the region (ISS-CNESPS -Istituto Superiore di Sanità, National Center of Epidemiology, Surveillance, and Health Promotion, regional governments, health units, associations).

In-house Services

We provide general and executive secretarial services, management of Dors human and finance resources, administrative and organizational support of the activities and projects handled by Dors. We also prepare the related deliberations and administrative acts.

We provide the interface between organizations and people contacting Dors, the Direction, and the staff members  who plan the activities for the different Areas.

We develop IT solutions that support our in-house activities and projects that involve other partners in other regions in Italy. In this way, we are able to ensure that users will find the DoRS website and its interactive components working properly. In addition, we send a monthly newsletter to registered users about website updates.

We provide the organizing secretariat services for training courses including procedures for ECM accreditation.