Self-management of health and wellbeing in rural areas

Programme 2021 - 2027 Interreg VI-B Northern Periphery and Arctic

Date of latest update: 2025-09-24

Description

Description (EN):

The partners would like to develop the vision outlined below in order to apply for the NPA call in October 2023. The overall vision of the project is to improve access for people living in rural areas to culturally-sensitive health and well-being self-management services, supported by an innovative framework that will increase collaboration and knowledge sharing across borders in the NPA regions. The main outputs from the project will be: - Mapping of the current support and services for citizens living in the regions - Mapping of how the regions use of remote telemedicine solutions occurs within self-management - Documenting challenges and barriers regarding citizen participation and treatment using digital self-management tools - Description of how families and carers are being included in the support of the citizen - How digital transformation can be developed and improved within cultural sensitive services to obtain a more integrated health and active citizen participation - How would a new service model support citizens living in extreme sparsely populated areas with reference to leading model areas in the Nordics and Europe - Guideline for implementing self-management solutions to support culturally-sensitive integration in rural areas - Recommendations and a roadmap for implementation of a new service model in the NPA region. The project approach will be an iterative and agile methodology that will ensure partner and end-user involvement through co-development, co-design and knowledge sharing across the partners and their eco-systems. The vision is innovative as it will identify the components needed to be able to implement culturally-sensitive health and well-being self-management services for the selected target groups in the NPA region. The results from the project would be a stepping stone to scale the culturally-sensitive health and well-being self-management services to other populations in the NPA region.

Actual Achievements (EN):

As project methodology the project team agreed to be inspired by the Norwegian model ‘Roadmap for Service innovation’ as a guideline for digital transformation of healthcare and care services. Based on the 'Roadmap for service innovation' the project team agreed to select the first steps to be completed and described in relation to the project goals and agreed target groups. The steps to be completed and that will support the completion of the preparatory project idea was the following steps: 1) Define problems and set goals - understanding what the challenges and needs are and the common denominators between the target groups 2) Explore the gains - Carry our early assessments of where the greatest potential exists for the achieving positive effects in the short and long term 3) Setting the right team - Understand how to build an interdisciplinary team that supports innovation efforts and safeguards quality and progress 4) Identify stakeholders and plan anchoring work - Identify which individuals will be affected by the project and identification of primary stakeholders. The project identified the common denominators between the target groups with focus on the challenges regarding self-management and access to healthcare and care in an easy way. This work lead into the agreeing on the project theme and the final cohorts to be integrated in the project: 'Connecting to isolated and mobile populations with culturally appropriate and integrated digital health and care solutions' The citizens which the project will focus on are disconnected groups who are trying to self-manage their own health and connect in an equitable way with a health and care system that is understandable, culturally appropriate, manageable, and very quickly generates high level of trust: - Refugee and asylum seekers populations in Ireland - Reindeer herders’ access to healthcare services - Fisherman in the North Atlantic in transit for long periods - Ageing population living independently in remote, rural, and isolated Icelandic areas The common thread between the target groups is one of marginalisation, disconnection, disempowerment, and low levels of trust and understanding. The aim of this project therefore is to create a digital service model to improve self-care and self-management and create culturally appropriate and equitable access to the health and care system, which is easy to navigate, manageable and create high levels of trust and familiarity from the outset. The cooperation in project team has been very positive and not at least innovative in seeking solutions and problem solving. There has been very good energy and willingness to work together on a topic that all 4 partners would benefit in the long run to find a suitable service model for. The added value of the cooperation has been to understand the common challenges that exists in the different target areas and understanding that we do have the same or similar challenges that would benefit that we together find a common digital service model that will support the selected target group. The project team held 10 Teams meetings where alignment and agreement on tasks was the primary focus. Furthermore, the project team meet up for a two-day workshop in Akureyri, Iceland on the 24th-25th August 2023. The primary focus on this workshop was to get an introduction to each partner region and agree the overall vision of the main project. It was valuable to meet up physically at the two days in Iceland, it got the project teams closer together and also understanding better where we come from. This is absolutely a recommendation to share in the NPA project network. The preparatory project did succeed in developing and submitting a main project proposal, which the partnership take great pride in. The partnership between the preparatory project and the main project was reduced due to lack of ERDF FO equivalent funding for the Faroese partner. All potential additional partners for a main project, suggested by NPA Secretariat and their RCPs, have been contacted and they were all interested in attending the main project but for various reasons this was not a possibility. However, a couple of them have decided to sign up as associated partners and they will follow a possible main project implementation carefully. One suggested partner, SANKs in Norway, has already a formal collaboration agreement with Region Västerbotten and they will be involved in possible main project activities. More on the partner search is explained in deliverable: D 1.5.1 - Project idea development.

Thematic information

Health and social services Rural and peripheral development

Priority: (VI-B_NPaA_1) Strengthening the innovation capacity for resilient and attractive NPA communities

Priority specific objective: RSO1.2. Reaping the benefits of digitisation for citizens, companies, research organisations and public authorities

Priority policy objective (Interreg specific objective): PO1 A more competitive and smarter Europe by promoting innovative and smart economic transformation and regional ICT connectivity

Type of intervention: 016 Government ICT solutions, e-services, applications

Partners (4)

Lead Partner: Region Västerbotten

Partner’s ID if not PIC: SE232100022201

Department: Glesbygdsmedicinskt Centrum (Centre for Rural Medicine)

Address: Köksvägen , 90189 Umeå, Sweden

Department address: Stationsgatan , 92331 Storuman, Sweden

Legal status: public

Organisation type: Regional public authority

Website: https://www.regionvasterbotten.se/glesbygdsmedicin

Total budget: EUR 14 403.75

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 9 362.43

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 65.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 5 041.32

Deildin fyri Arbeiðs- og Almannaheilsu

Name: Deildin fyri Arbeiðs- og Almannaheilsu

Department: Public Health

Partner’s ID if not PIC: 432407

Address: Sigmundargøta, 100 Tórshavn, Faroe Islands

Department address: Sigmundargøta, 100 Tórshavn, Faroe Islands

Legal status: public

Organisation type: Local public authority

Website: http://www.health.fo

Total budget: EUR 9 121.87

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 5 929.21

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 65.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 3 192.66

Heilbrigðis- og velferðartækniklasi Norðurlands

Name: Heilbrigðis- og velferðartækniklasi Norðurlands

Department: Health and Welfare

Partner’s ID if not PIC: 531119-0100

Address: Audbrekku , 640 Husavik, Iceland

Department address: Hafnarstraeti , 600 Akureyri, Iceland

Legal status: public

Organisation type: Other

Website: http://www.veltek.is

Total budget: EUR 17 352.51

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 11 279.13

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 65.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 6 073.38

University of Limerick

Name: University of Limerick

Department: School of Medicine

Partner’s ID if not PIC: IE6609370G

Address: Castletroy, V94 T9PX Castleroy, Ireland

Department address: Ireland

Legal status: public

Organisation type: Higher education and research organisations

Website: https://www.ul.ie/medicine/about/staff/academic-faculty/prof-liam-glynn

Total budget: EUR 9 121.87

Partner’s programme co-financing: EUR 5 929.21

Partner’s programme co-financing rate: 65.00%

Partner contribution: EUR 3 192.66

Partners map

Partners and Projects info

Department of Occupational Medicine and Public Health in the Faroese Hospital System

Self-management of health and wellbeing in rural areas

Partners and Projects info

Iceland Health and Welfare Technology Cluster

Self-management of health and wellbeing in rural areas

Partners and Projects info

University of Limerick

Self-management of health and wellbeing in rural areas

Partners and Projects info

Regional Council of Västerbotten

Self-management of health and wellbeing in rural areas

Lead partner

Project partner

Summary

Project name (EN): Self-management of health and wellbeing in rural areas

Project acronym: SelfCare-Prep

Project ID: NPA0400115

Project start date: 2023-06-01

Project end date: 2023-11-30

Project status: closed

Relevant linked projects:

Recruit and Retain - Making it Work (EN) | Part of this initiative will touch upon the challenges of service provision of healthcare and care in extreme remoteness, where professional presence is a challenge. Understanding how physical presence of professionals can be combined with online service provision and self-care models are key to succeed. (EN), ITTS (EN) | Previous project focusing on transferring distance spanning solutions and technology solutions for improved healthcare in remote and rural regions. UL has important experiences to bring the this collaboration from earlier NPA work. (EN), integrated Healthcare and Care - through distance spanning solutions. (EN) | Centre for Rural Medicine are leading this work on behalf of the Nordic governments. GMC's insight to how to get solutions implemented and work, what solutions that exist (we have mapped all distance spanning services in Nordic countries), environmental impact of distance spanning service provision, citizens and the professionals view from distance spanning service provision and self care, the regional development impact are all knowledge collected to go into a possible main NPA project. (EN)

Total budget/expenditure: EUR 50 000.00

Total EU funding (amount): EUR 15 291.64

Total EU funding (co-financing rate): 65.00%

Co-financing sources:

ERDF: Amount, EUR 15 291.64. Co-financing rate, 65.00%.
ERDF equivalent: Amount, EUR 5 929.21. Co-financing rate, 65.00%. Sources, FO.
ERDF equivalent: Amount, EUR 11 279.13. Co-financing rate, 65.00%. Sources, IS.

Investments, deliverables, policy contributions

(bullets are inserted automatically and may be incorrectly placed)

Deliverables:

Existing spanning solutions
Cultural sensetive services
Project eco-system
Stakeholder mapping
Project idea development

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

Financing programme

2021 - 2027 Interreg VI-B Northern Periphery and Arctic

Last month that data in keep.eu was retrieved from the Programme's website or received from the Programme

2025-09-24

No. of projects in keep.eu / Total no. of projects (% of projects in keep.eu)

65 / 65 (100%)

No. of project partnerships in keep.eu / Total no. of project partnerships (% of project partnerships in keep.eu)

310 / 310 (100%)

Notes on the data

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Self-management of health and wellbeing in rural areas

Description

Thematic information

Partners (4)

Partners map

Summary

Investments, deliverables, policy contributions

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

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