BackgroundThe response to the COVID-19 pandemic around Europe has caused several NGO’s engaged in providing support to vulnerable groups to either completely stop, postpone or adapt their activities. Organisations working with vulnerable populations, have experienced extreme difficulties and pressure due to restrictions and sanitary emergencies causing severe limitations of resources to advocate for the needs and rights of those populations. This might have resulted in increased feelings of isolation, helplessness and risks for physical and mental health for their members and users. In these circumstances building the capacity of young advocates is of extreme urgency, and is challenged by the fact that the task has to be almost exclusively transferred onlineThe project will focus on an adapting training activities for young advocates/activists, offered by organisations working in the field of sexual health (HIV and coinfections, sex workers, LGBTI) to the new virtual reality (as a consequence of COVID-19). It will have a specific focus on mental health as the trainings are not only providing knowledge, online safety & digital rights' (data protection, privacy issues, censorship) which can be relevant to young stigmatised or criminalised populations, but also personal growth. It will also create an online youth activist toolbox, which can be used by partners in the projects and by any other youth activist or organisation it may be relevant to.ObjectivesDevelop an online platform that will act as an exchange of best practices for youth training programmes between organisations.Create online tools/trainings that would be useful for youth advocacy work in the field of human rights/ organisations led by key populations PartnersEATG (leading organisation)- a patient-led NGO that advocates for the rights and interests of people living with or affected by HIV/ AIDS and related co-infections within the WHO Europe region. ICRSE- network of sex worker organisations and allies supporting the development of national and international law, policy and practice, which respects and upholds the human and labour rights of sex workers throughout Europe and Central Asia.LEGEBITRA- Local Slovenian LGBTI+ NGO, offering counselling (including online), active on HIV and sexual health, working with youth.Key population: Young advocates working or volunteering in the field of sexual health, to address the challenges of the key populations (sex workers, people living with HIV, and LGBTI persons).Results and Intellectual outputsThrough the project activities, and the following intellectual outputs (IOs), the project will result in a clear and implementable model of online training provision for young advocates with a focus on sexual health, as well as a freely accessible online toolbox of guidelines.IO 1: Needs assessment and recommendations. The project will conduct desk research and quantitative and qualitative research will be conducted to inform the design of future activities with the needs of the key populations. IO 2: Written recommendations. The needs assessment will provide a solid base for written recommendations. Following that, the project will conduct an online training for trainers to train them according to the written recommendations, which will be updated after the training. The written recommendations will serve as a guide for how to conduct trainings online for youth activists. IO3: Training programme outline and training materials. Once the trainers are trained, the project team will conduct a pilot training to test the written recommendations in a real setting. The team will work together with the trainers to develop the training programme outline and training materials. IO 4: M&E Framework. In parallel, evaluation will be done with training participants before, during and after conducting the training. The project team will prepare an M&E framework to assess the impact of the training activities. IO 5: Guide for assuring psychosocial well-being during online trainings. According to the chosen methodology, the psychosocial aspect will be measured during the pilot training. A guide for assuring psychosocial well-being during online trainings for youths with clear recommendations will be written after completion.IO 6: Youth activist training materials online toolbox. All partners together will select and review the materials, that are relevant for young activists working in the field of HIV, sex work or in the LGBTI field. The online toolbox will be freely accessible.IO 7: Video presenting the toolbox and project outcomes. The project will record a video that will be widely shared by project partners and their networks,to provide an introduction to the toolbox and further information on the project outcomes.

The European Patients' Academy on Therapeutic Innovation (EUPATI) IMI project resulted in a number of key outputs for the field of patient engagement. The core activities continue running until 2019 under a PPP consortium under an EPF programme focusing on the Patient Expert Training Course, the multilingual public Toolbox, and the EUPATI National Platforms Network. It is imperative that these pillars that support the patient engagement landscape exist in the medium- and long-term to address the growing field of patient engagement. Further investment is needed to develop sustainable models of collaboration to ensure this, and put into place the infrastructure required for these to work, building on those already established under IMI-EUPATI.

The main objective of RBDCOV project is to test the efficacy, tolerability, and safety of a new vaccine against different variants of COVID-19 based on the outstanding data generated using a recombinant protein developed by the consortium partners. Two different clinical trials will be run during the project duration to test the variants recombinant RBD protein vaccine, codifying for Beta and Alpha SARS-Cov-2 variants in paediatric population and in immunocompromised adults. The aim of the project is to focus not only on the current SARS-CoV-2 variants but also in the emerging ones as Beta and Alpha variants. Thus, a continuous monitoring of the new emerging variants will be performed throughout the project to ensure that the platform is prepared to cope with the disease. The platform used for the generation of the vaccines is adaptable to variants and will be ready to include in the design any other potential variant that could appear in short, medium and large term. Preclinical data are already available. The core of RBDCOV consortium has been in close contact to the corresponding agencies and considering Reflection paper on the regulatory requirements for vaccines intended to provide protection against variant strain(s) of SARS-CoV-2, preclinical data supporting the first vaccine candidate can be extrapolated for the vaccines against the new emerging variants. This create a unique opportunity for RBDCOV consortium to generate the first RBD recombinant vaccine to be approved in Europe. This vaccine will be manufactured by an European technological company that will change actual paradigms and allow the really change to One health concept, based on the close relationship between the animal world and the onset of certain infections in humans.