November 22nd, 2002
Location: Conference Centre, Madrid.


Those present:

Carlos Brotons (Spain), Mateja Bulc (Slovenia), Ramon Ciurana (Spain), Ton Drenthen (The Netherlands), Pilar Kloppe (Spain), Eleftherios Thireos (Greece), Maxime Mancini (Switzerland), Rosa Piñeiro (Spain), Donatella Sghedoni (Italy), Jasna Vuckach (Croatia), Carlos Martins (Portugal), Antonia Sánchez (Spain)

Apologies received from delegates that could not attend to this meeting.
Particularly, apologies from Eva Jurgova who had a problem at the very last minute (her flight was cancelled because of the NATO meeting in Prague).

1. Carlos Brotons reads the minutes of the previous meeting, last June in London.
   
   
   
2. EUROPREV workshops at next WONCA Conference, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Both workshops prepared and submitted to WONCA are deeply discussed. Concerning the first one (How GPs in different countries address patients' life-style risk factors) it is decided to add 'tobacco experience' in the title since most of the presentations are related to tobacco cessation. In addition, it is decided to add the experiences from Switzerland and Greece (correct the name of Ton (Drenthen) and to include Max and Eleftherios as authors). In order to compare the different experiences and offer a more coherent information to the audience it was decided to speak about the same topics in each country presentation: prevalence of smoking in each country, when the guideline/programme/experience was developed, who did develop it, what is the content, strategies of implementation, results of evaluation, funding, price of tobacco (for comparison use the same brand) and price of drugs (NRT, bupropion). Concerning the second workshop, it is decided to leave it as it is, with some changes in the organisation and presentation of the workshop. We will focus basically in osteoporosis and colon cancer (breast cancer screening will be only mentioned). Ramon C. will introduce the workshop with the scientific evidence of both recommendations, and Donatella S. will speak about osteoporosis and Carlos M. will speak about colon cancer screening. They will concentrate on advantages and disadvantages, including topics such as acceptability, external validity, cost, barriers, and others. Information about recommendations in practice for those conditions will be requested to all Europrev delegates in order to have information from different countries, and they will be sent to Carlos M, and Donatella S. This will give them the opportunity to have an overall picture of what is the policy of the different national colleges. Carlos B. will participate in another workshop entitled 'recent developments in cardiovascular risk prediction' chair by Ian Graham from Dublin, and with other members of the Joint European CV disease prevention committee.
   
   
   
3. Carlos M. presents the proposal of creating subgroups within the network in order to be more active in different specific topics, and obtain and disseminate updated scientific information throughout the network. It is agreed that it is an important initiative, and it was decided to create the following subgroups (coordinators): Cardiovascular (Carlos B), Cancer (Carlos M), Immunisation (Rosa P), Tobacco (Ton D, and Mario S), Lifestyle risk factor (Mateja B). All the delegates could collaborate with one or more than one subgroups. It is mentioned thought that it is important to define the objectives and methodology of these groups and discuss it at next Wonca Conference. The results of the work of these groups could be published in a Europrev newsletter and circulate through all the colleges.
   
   
   
4. Mateja B (as vice-president of UEMO) informs the group about the view of UEMO concerning the aims and perspectives of general practitioners in Europe. In addition, there is a group of prevention within UEMO, and it could be interesting to collaborate each other in the future.
   
   
   
5. Carlos B., comments on the possibility of organise an open scientific meeting of EUROPREV, with a specific theme (nutrition in primary care), next November 2003 in Barcelona. Unfortunately, there is no budget to organise such an open meeting, and besides that, the organisers of the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine considered that it is complicated to run it within the national congress, as it was requested. It seems not very realistic at the present time to organise such an open meeting. Nevertheless, the Galician Government through its Department of Health will financed us an European guideline on nutrition in primary care. Rosa P, and Mateja B. will work together on the proposal (structure, methodology,…) and will circulate it throughout the network. We have one year to finish this project, so we could disseminate its publication at the beginning of 2004.
   
   
   
6. Memberships. So far, we have received membership fees from the following colleges: Belgium, Malta, Ireland, Cyprus, Austria, Italy, Switzerland (The Netherlands is on its way). And one individual (from Israel). It is comment once again that it is important to collaborate with this fee in order to cover part of the expenses of europrev.
   
   
   
7. EUROPREV survey: we have received the last questionnaires from Greece, so now we can run again the statistical programme (no changes are expected in the results), and prepare the manuscript. Carlos B., will try to send a draft to all delegates before Christmas.
   
   
   
8. Proposal for sponsorship to EGPRW, ESGP/FM: we have no proposals at the present time to submit to those organisations.
   
   
   
9. Place and date of next meeting: Ljubljana, Slovenia, at the WONCA 2003 Conference. Mateja B. will inform us the exact place and date of the meeting.