Hellenic Alliance/Action for Stroke – FAST 112 HEROES: Patient engagement in educational stroke awareness for kids in the Greek language.

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#BrainLifeGoals Project Grant Winner 2020

Intro:

Patient engagement model refers to collaborative efforts to engage a meaningful alliance between stakeholders that optimizes knowledge transfer and research (Staniszewka, 2020). Involving patients in school-based programming, especially geared towards young children, is something that many schools have started to focus on for the early training of children in health-related issues (SHE, Schools for Health in Europe Network Foundation). Patient engagement in the “FAST 112 HEROES” educational program (Tsakpounidou et al. 2020) enhances service delivery by increasing the validity of the program. During the pandemic, a pilot version has been created and implemented on-line in the Greek language, with 33 participants, from eight cities (Chalkida, Eleftheroupoli, Kastoria, Katerini, Naoussa, Patra, Piraeus, Thessaloniki) and two cities in Cyprus (Larnaca and Limessol).

Methods:

To date, two young stroke survivors whose medical history included ischemic stroke with no overt symptoms, presently serve on Super Grand League Team (team of health care professionals and educators who helped develop the education content for the program). These individuals, a teacher and a special educator, are actively involved in the program, both face-to-face and the on-line pilot version. Our aim is to recruit more like-minded stroke survivors to become patient member as well as to investigate the effectiveness of this patient involvement. We will begin a campaign to recruit stroke survivor so they can continue to share experiences with the educational team, entailing a patient-friendly element for question development. This will serve as a potent variable to validate the available data in every phase of the program within our patient participation matrix. Data will be collected regarding quality indicators for patient involvement.
Results: The benefits of patient engagement for “FAST HEROES 112” is that all aspects of the program, decision making and research will be prioritized. The content that is created will be relevant, politically correct and acceptable from the perspective of patients. Available data supports that patient involvement guarantee important life benefits for survivors, but more data will validate our findings and provide “high-integrity evidence.”

Discussion:

More evidence will be gathered from the educational program “FAST HEROES 112” to examine effectiveness while engaging not only the two stroke survivors we have at present, but recruiting new members, individuals who have suffered stroke. Using the patient-researcher model, we will focus on patient-identified priorities. This is an important contribution to improve quality of care and advocacy. In hopes of consequently maximizing the potential for “democratic accountability” of the stroke survivors involvement in health-related educational programs to the general public.