EPINICU (Empowering Parents of newborns in the NICU). Progetto multi-paese per identificare modelli di intervento sostenibili in diversi setting: risultati dall'Italia e da 3 revisioni sistematiche.

My PhD project is part of an ongoing multicenter multicountry before and after intervention study called EPINICU (Empowering Parents of newborns in the NICU) involving 4 countries (Italy, Tanzania, Brazil and Sri Lanka) and different partners (CUAMM, IMIP, WHO Head Quarters Geneva), approved by the Institutional Review Board of Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (Prot.31633, October 22, 2019) and by all Ethical Committees of partners’ institutions. Aim of EPINICU is to assess parental mental health and participation in care in the different settings, and develop and test low-cost setting-specific interventions to empower parents in the NICU. The key objective of my PhD was the coordination of the project at the Italian site while collaborating with the multicountry project. During these 3 years my research activities included: - Data collection, analysis and reporting of the baseline assessment on parental mental health and participation in care at the Italian site (IRCSS Burlo Garofolo’s NICU). As in Italy, EPINICU started just before the COVID-19 pandemic, it became an opportunity to generate evidence exploring parental mental distress and participation in care over different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. This first analysis led to a published paper (Bua et al, 2021). Moreover, as in Italy, a much higher proportion of fathers participated to the baseline assessment, differences of mental distress and participation in care between mothers and fathers were explored. Italian data was then compared with the other participating countries. - Contribution to formative research, by actively participating and contributing to three scoping reviews including 146 randomized controlled clinical trials on interventions of Infant and Family Centered Developmental Care (IFCDC), with the aim to inform all EPINICU partners for the implementation phase of EPINICU. These scoping reviews produced a menu of IFCDC interventions, outcomes and outcome tools which can be useful both for policy makers when choosing and implementing IFCDC interventions and for researchers when conducting projects on IFCDC. - Coordination of the development and implementation of Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Time-definite (SMART) interventions to empower parents in the Italian NICU, hence starting a quality improvement project. - Participation to a multi-country multi-professional group of researchers hence contributing to a community of good practice and generating new ideas for future research projects. These research activities led to some academic products including 6 papers (one published, the other 5 ready for submission as a journal supplement at the moment of PhD submission) and presentations of the EPINICU project to a national congress by myself and to international congresses by other EPINICU team members.