News

Badalona setting the scene for trial start

Thu. 31. May 2018 09:46

As a contrast to our last Consortium meeting in wintery Berlin, the fourth ImpleMentAll meeting took place in mostly sunny Badalona, Catalonia on 16-17 May. Apart from the favourable weather conditions, the meeting benefitted from the positive sentiment and excitement in the consortium about the start of the trial on 1 June. 

The final preparations for trial start are well under way and after a busy couple of months it now seems that all implementation sites will be ready with both their iCBT intervention and necessary ethical approvals in time.

The first reporting period, closing by the end of June, has been packed with deliverables setting the scene for the trial and these were a central topic at the meeting. Fortunately, nearly all of them have already been completed and only a few are still in the finalising phase.

Opening the meeting, the Coordinator, Claus Duedal Pedersen, emphasised the main achievements of the first 18 months: the finalisation of the generic study protocol,  the finalisation of the repository of determinants of practice and implementation strategies as well as the protocol for prioritisation of determinants of practice and identification of implementation activities, and the readiness of the data collection system by June.  

All of the implementation sites presented on the status in their local context including implementation-as-usual activities, localisation of the study protocol, recruitment strategies, and data collection. 

The online data collection system developed by project partner BSA, which will ensure easy and comprehensive data collection throughout the project, was presented to the consortium and a face-to-face training session was carried out for all the data managers.

Updates on the project's outreaching activities, including External Advisory Board, dissemination, and communication, were given and it was clear that the efforts put into engaging with our stakeholders are paying off. The project is gaining interest from external parties and has received valuable advice from its Advisory Board members. 

In an effort to open up even further to the outside world, IMA will focus on two main outreaching activities in the coming months: the Midterm Workshop and a mechanism for interacting with "affiliate partners". The latter will enable interested partners of any kind outside of the consortium to be connected to the project and benefit from a closer involvement with our work through a Memorandum of Understanding. 

The next consortium meeting will take place on 8-9 October in Odense, Denmark, in connection with the Midterm Workshop.