Staying in control of our lives can be a daily struggle—especially this year, and especially for the half of us who live with a chronic condition. It’s time for a change. It’s time to work together to take back control. One way to start focusing on your health again is to see your doctor but there’s a lot to take in during a consultation with a health practitioner. Preparing yourself for the consultation helps ensure you leave satisfied. Check out www.thisislivingtoday.com to find our guide that helps you to prepare and suggests questions to ask in the session. The initiative and the website have been developed by Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH in collaboration with representatives from patient organizations and other experts, including Active Citizenship Network.
Pain Alliance Europe (PAE), of which Cittadinanzattiva/Active Citizenship Network is a Board Member, is delighted to present the third edition of the Brain Mind Pain (BMP) Grant with the theme of “Healthy Sleep for People Living with Brain, Mind and Pain Conditions”. PAE represents the voice of people living with chronic pain. Pain, in a nutshell, is a significant disruptor of overall well-being, quality of daily life, and lifestyle choices. Chronic pain impacts mental health and healthy sleep. The latter is crucial for general health. With this vicious cycle in mind, the BMP Grant aims to explore and provide practical solutions for people living with pain and struggling with healthy sleep. PAE seeks all projects, big or small, that offer functional outcomes for people living with pain. They welcome applicants from various backgrounds, such as patient-centered NGOs, research/academia, medicine, and commercial organizations. Past BMP Grant winners include projects that utilized digital technology, such as an app for monitoring symptoms, an eHealth system with a self-help guide, or a social media campaign. Moreover, the BMP Grant also welcomes offline strategies for healthy sleep. This year, the BMP Grant fund is EUR 60,000.
The European mHealth Hub established by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Regional Ministry of Health of Andalusia (Spain), together with 17 other European partners, to support the integration of mHealth programmes and services into national or regional health systems, is a project funded by the European Commission. Part of the work was to develop a Policy Framework Report aimed to contribute towards developing a policy framework for EU on cross-border adoption and assessment of innovation in mHealth to help pave the way for moving towards a “Single Healthcare Digital Market” in Europe. The Report aims to contribute to the development of a Common Policy Framework for mHealth in Europe, by sharing lessons learnt and recommendations, with the goal of promoting harmonization. Even so, app developers, industries, academia, research institutions and end-users (citizens and healthcare professionals) are seen as key actors for the Policy Framework development, and their role should be highlighted.
CROPBOOSTER-P is a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) project, of which Cittadinanzattiva/Active Citizenship Network is a Core Stakeholder, supported through the EU Horizon 2020 funding programme. The project, which started on November 1, 2018, is mapping and assessing current and future strategies, methods and technologies for crop improvement. The project mainly aims at new crop varieties in current agricultural practice by aligning the development of these crops with the needs, concerns, wishes and expectations of society. Following a responsible research and innovation (RRI) approach, stakeholders representing all actors of the food system are involved both in designing the blueprints for the future crops, as well as in the developing of the roadmap to successfully introduce the new crops to the users, and to educate the consumers to new paradigms of sustainable agriculture, based on future proofed crops and more efficient resource use.
The ENGAGE project, funded from EU H2020 Research and Innovation Programme, aims to link the informal resilience naturally inherent in citizens with the formal work done by authorities to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.
As part of the research activities of the ENGAGE project, Cittadinanzattiva played a key role in interviewing citizens of the city of L'Aquila, in Abruzzo (Italy) who experienced the 2009 earthquake. In the article we intend to deepen some aspects, which could limit the ability of citizens and communities to implement coping actions. Particular attention is paid to the measures and methods implemented by the authorities, with the aim of bringing further elements to the discussion on the best approaches to foster and increase the resilience of communities.
Recently, Cittadinanzattiva created a safety Smart box with helpful material to promote student resilience in school contexts. With these materials, students can, for example, become more familiar with municipal #civilprotection emergency plans.
Since 2014, Active Citizenship Network has launched both in Italy and abroad the educational and training program “Active for Young Professionals”, which regularly offers internship and volunteering opportunities to undergraduate students and recent graduates from different universities. Below, read directly from who lived this experience.
Active Citizenship Network’s Community, shortly “ACN Community”, has been launched as a development of the “Active for Young professionals” program, realized back in 2014.
This Community distinguishes itself as a network of individuals rather than associations aiming at fostering the relationship of ACN with the single individuals that ACN has met and gotten to know in the last years through the program. In order to keep in touch with these people, the Community allows all its members the opportunity not only to remain in contact with the network itself but also to interact with each other. Furthermore, reuniting all the interns and volunteers who collaborated with ACN through the years within an informal network to continue to cooperate with them as well as provide them help and support throughout their professional paths makes the initiative mutually beneficial for both ACN and individuals themselves. The Community is addressed to all those young people who, with different roles, have been involved in the program “Active for Young Professionals”, including youths that have been supported in their studies, especially with the drafting of their thesis, youths that have been given the opportunity to work, either as volunteers or as interns, at the ACN’s headquarters, and all those young people and adults, either patients or not, that have volunteered or cooperated with Cittadinanzattiva/Active Citizenship Network to support and promote its work at the national and international level. If you wish to become a member of ACN’s Community, you can write to
For its Brussels office, Active Citizenship Network-Cittadinanzattiva is recruiting a part time EU project manager. The successful applicant will represent Active Citizenship Network-Cittadinanzattiva as a consortium partner in European projects - funded by the EU Commission - already in place, as well as supporting the team in liaising with the EU Institutions, organizing events, contents and the general management of the job. If interested, please read more and send a CV with a motivation letter via email to
Are you interested in an internship in EU policy? Cittadinanzattiva APS is looking for a trainee to contribute to the development of its activities in the European framework. The selected candidate will be part of Active Citizenship Network (ACN) and will work together with the Director of European policies of Cittadinanzattiva and its team, located in Rome and Brussels. The candidate will have the opportunity to develop competencies in the field of European projects, citizen’s involvement, advocacy, and policy making at the European Union level, communication, corporate governance, and citizens’ rights. He or she will also be involved in the management of other European initiatives and projects, particularly dealing with ACN’s Network and having relations with partners, institutions and private and public stakeholders.
Cittadinanzattiva is proud to be part of a new large European partnership to give life to the project NIGHTINGALE Novel InteGrated toolkit for enhanced pre-Hospital life support and Triage In ChallenGing And Large Emergencies, funded by H2020 HorizonEU Research & Innovation Programme. NIGHTINGALE will develop and validate an innovative set of integrated tools for the response to large Medical Emergencies: a multi-technological toolkit that networks the different actors involved in the emergency management, and that serves emergency physicians and non-medical civil protection agencies (firefighters, police, but also volunteers and citizens). The goal is to ensure a substantial improvement to pre-hospital life support and triage. The tools developed will allow a shared response between emergency medical services, non-medical civil protection personnel, volunteers and citizens by increasing their "field of vision", information sharing and communication between teams and with victims.
Cittadinanzattiva, in particular with Active Citizenship Network, will be an active part of the project bringing a civic perspective, ensuring that the solutions developed meet the needs of citizens and enhance their skills. We will participate in the dissemination and communication of the project results thanks to the wide network of "civic" (but not only) contacts in Italy and Europe. If you or your organization are interested in the field, join us with your civic experience and knowledge! Write ASAP to Daniela Quaggia
DICA EUROPA! is a project funded under the National Operational Program PON "Sistemi di Politiche Attive per l'Occupazione" (SPAO) and developed by Studio Saperessere and Prodos Consulting, in partnership with Cittadinanzattiva, Arci and Legambiente Scuola e Formazione.
Through the organization of 40 training courses throughout the country, the provision of 20 hours of online training, 10 webinars and the realization of more than 10 networking events, the project aims to provide participants (volunteers, associates and activists working in the Third Sector) with practical and methodological tools to identify the most appropriate forms of access to financial resources of the European Union and develop project proposals in line with the standards of the European Commission. In particular, the course aims to train professionals belonging to third sector organizations, with specific theoretical knowledge and operational skills in project management for social planning.