The EU-funded project IDEAL aims to help deaf people in their daily lives by developing their health literacy thanks to the involvement of 8 organizations from 5 European countries:
- Tiber Umbria Comett Education Programme (TUCEP) & Associazioni Unite dei Sordi della Regione Umbria from Italy
- Innosign from Slovakia
- Confederación Estatal de Personas Sordas (CNSE) from Spain
- SignCoders Kft from Hungary
- Institut pro regionální rozvoj & Masarykova univerzita & Ústav pro zdravotní gramotnost from Czechia.
This topic is crucial because deaf people face many challenges to access health information and communicate with healthcare professionals. That is why all the project partners committed to provide them with relevant materials and opportunities. IRR joined the project in its implementation phase and uses its expertise to ensure the progress of the activities.
Several Work Packages are planned:
- WP1- Management: the project partners precisely define the strategy and resources to increase the health literacy of deaf people.
- WP2- Handbook 4 Adult Educators: a handbook and a training session are organized for educators used to work for hard-of-hearing adults.
- WP3- Learning experience to increase deaf adult health literacy: educational materials and a training session are created for hard-of-hearing persons to help them develop their health knowledge
- WP4- Platform: creating a web platform to make available the materials developed during WP3
- WP5- Awareness-raising and dissemination: ensuring the spread of the project’s outputs through the IDEAl website and social media
Each of the project partners conducted a survey in its country to precisely define the needs and the health knowledge of the target groups: hard-of-hearing adults and their educators. This information is crucial to implement the following learning activities. In this way, interviews and questionnaires were used to determine the topics which they are more familiar with and how they overcome their everyday challenges.
Once the information is gathered, the project partners will edit a handbook to assist the educators in helping deaf people for WP2. Indeed, particular methods are needed to share knowledge about health issues. In the educational material, educators will find relevant advice and innovative methodologies that will finally be useful to increase the health literacy of deaf people. Then, training will be organized to allow them to completely integrate these new skills.
Learning experience and the creation of other specific learning materials like a curriculum are also planned to increase the health literacy of hard-of-hearing people (WP3). They will have the opportunity to participate in enriching and pedagogical activities. The project partners hope that they will find helpful resources to allow them to have more knowledge about the health issues they could face, how to prevent them, and where to find assistance.
All the outcomes will be shared online to maximize the spread of our achievements (WP4 & WP5).
The duration of the project is 24 months, starting in May 2023 and ending in April 2025, with a total eligible budget of 250 000,00 EUR.
