From today, March 1 at 11:00 a.m. until next March 8 at 10:00 a.m., you can vote for the photos in the health technology category at @SValdecilla

The photographs can be seen displayed on the exterior screen of the Botín Center at o'clock.

Voting can only be done through SaludArteValdecilla's twitter @SValdecilla. The two photographs in each category with the most “likes” will be the winners.

Important note: You can retweet, but only the "likes" of each photo are counted. If the tweet is cited, the "likes" are not counted.

The photographs that you can vote on twitter are detailed below.

Link to vote:https://twitter.com/SValdecilla/status/1366328383613915141?s=20

 Title: Esterilización a baja temperatura

 Description: Heat sensitive materials are sterilized at low temperature by hydrogen peroxide. In the image it is being verified that the parameters of the sterilization cycle are correct.

 Title: Codificación 2D

 Description: Secure and coded biological samples.

 Title: Artesanía en miscroscopía  electrónica

 Description: Resin-soaked tissue sample (gold piece) embedded in a microtome support and prepared to be sectioned with a diamond blade. Each section floats on water (Diatom cuvette) and is collected on a grid to be viewed under the transmission electron microscope.

 Title: Lavadora nº 4

 Description: The photograph represents the entry of the dirty material in the washing machine nº4, just arrived after a surgical intervention.

 Title: Congelados por el COVID

Description: Storage of COVID-19 samples.

Title: Buscando al enemigo invisible

Description: After the hard days of the Covid waves, we continue in the fight to make the anatomical catastrophe visible. We are the light of the invisible, we are water, we are air, matter and the light in your body and in mine.

The Jury has already evaluated the photographs submitted to each of the categories of the SaludArte Photography contest. The six photographs of each category selected by the jury and which will be displayed on the exterior screen of the Botín Center.

Resolution (PDF)

The preselected photographs can be viewed in the following video:

Now it is the turn of the public, who will choose the winning photographs through their votes in @SValdecilla

VOTING PROCEDURE

Through SaludArteValdecilla's twitter @SValdecilla from February 22.

Each week a category of photographs of the contest will be voted on and they will be exhibited on those same dates on the exterior screen of the Botín Center (at the exact hours of the day).

The dates established to view and vote on twitter the photographs of each category as well as view them in the Botin Center are the following:

Scientific Category:

February 22 at 11:00 a.m. to March 1 at 10:00 a.m.

Health Technology Category:

March 1 at 11:00 a.m. to March 8 at 10:00 a.m.

Category Health in general and social aspects of health:

March 8 at 11:00 a.m. to March 15 at 10:00 a.m.

The two photographs in each category with the most “likes” will be the winners.

Note: You can retweet the content of the publication, but only the "likes" obtained by each photograph in the original tweet will be counted. If the tweet is cited, the "likes" are not counted.

Once the voting period for each category is over, the votes obtained for each photograph will be published on Twitter. The "likes" issued outside the voting period will not be counted

Call’s resolution for pre-doctoral contracts IDIVAL-University of Cantabria of the Research Personnel Program in Pre-doctoral Training in the Area of ​​Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Health Sciences has just been published.

This call is aimed at university graduates who are going to develop their doctoral thesis in the biosanitary environment of Cantabria through a 4-year pre-doctoral contract. The grants will consist of employment contracts, under the modality of a pre-doctoral contract. The purpose of the grants is to simultaneously carry out, by the predoctoral research staff in training, research tasks in a specific and novel Project. In turn, when the beneficiaries of the aid obtain the doctorate degree prior to the start of the last year of the aid, the employment of a one-year postdoctoral orientation period (hereinafter POP) will be financed.

The aid will comprise three concepts: aid for the financing of contracts, additional aid to cover expenses derived from stays in R&D centers and expenses derived from enrollment in doctoral studies.

The first three with the best final score for each field of research will be considered selected candidates from the list published in the annexes of the resolution.

The incorporation and registration of the new hires will be on April 1, 2021, upon presentation by the interested parties of the documents collected in the call.

Link to resolution

Cohorte Cantabria will allow to know in depth the characteristics of the population of Cantabria and its behavior in key aspects for health such as lifestyle habits, risk factors for getting sick, the causes of the main diseases and, even more importantly, favoring development of personalized, predictive and preventive medicine.

These are the main objectives of this population study, pioneer in Spain, which has been launched in Cantabria, promoted by the Valdecilla Research Institute (IDIVAL) and endorsed by the Ministry of Health to seek synergies that make it possible to reconcile the enormous health effort and economic carried out to combat COVID-19 and promote biomedical research in the region.

The project, called “Cohorte Cantabria”, already in a very advanced design phase, will recruit some 50,000 volunteers from the region to investigate their health and analytical data, obtained from blood samples. In addition, all of them will be periodically monitored over the years, which will help to deepen the knowledge of their characteristics.

“Cohorte Cantabria” is possible thanks to the enormous involvement of a large number of professionals and will focus initially on the study of the evolution of the response to COVID-19 infection, although it was born as a multipurpose cohort that will be able to study many other diseases.

Design and endorsement by IDIVAL and UC

In these first phases, for its deployment, the study is designed by a mixed team in which researchers from IDIVAL and the University of Cantabria (UC) participate, endorsed by the main health institutions in our region.

In fact, the initiative includes, among others, the director of Digital Transformation and Relations with Users, Santiago García Blanco; the Deputy Director of Health Assistance of the Cantabrian Health Service (SCS), Trinitario Pina; the SCS Primary Care Manager, Alicia Gómez and the Manager of the Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital (HUMV), Rafael Tejido.

For its part, the team of researchers participating in the first design phase is made up of IDIVAL's scientific director, Marcos López Hoyos; the head of the Digestive Service, Javier Crespo; the UC professor of epidemiology, Trinidad Dierssen and the Director of Management of IDIVAL, Galo Peralta.

Given the size of the study, the participation of a significant number of health professionals is expected, both in the aspects of design, initial deployment, follow-up and analysis of results over the years.

Take advantage of vaccination against the coronavirus

For its deployment, which will foreseeably begin next February, the vaccination against the coronavirus of the population of Cantabria will be used, which involves a huge logistical effort and will have direct contact with most of the population of the Autonomous Community.

Thus, from the summoned population to be vaccinated, a group of volunteers, of legal age, representative of different population cohorts, will be chosen at random in advance.

Those selected for the study will be contacted previously and those who agree to participate voluntarily, while being vaccinated, will provide health information through questionnaires and the blood sample, for safe storage.

All the extractions will be kept in the IDIVAL Biobank to develop, a posteriori, all the studies that require biological samples, together with the data of the participants that help to understand the epidemiology, risk factors, genetics, among others, of various diseases.

International reference

The cohorts, such as the one that is planned to be deployed with this study, called Cantabria Cohorte, are very valuable sources of information in the field of health research and will allow Cantabria, in a matter of a few years, to participate in large international collaborative projects of the first level.

Some examples of important international cohorts with a long history, well known in the medical world and that have provided much useful information to improve the management and prevention of diseases, are the American Framingham cohort (focused on cardiovascular diseases) and the English cohort United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS, focused on diabetes). 

IDIVAL announces the NEXT-VAL (NEXT generation VALdecilla) program within the call for the Valdecilla 2020 Biosanitary Revitalization Plan, aimed at emerging researchers. This call, which promotes young talent and wants to facilitate the first leap for researchers to obtain competitive funding. This call tries to cover a gap that has increased in recent years due to greater competitiveness in accessing funding for research projects.

Potential beneficiaries as main researchers of the NEXT-VAL grants are those people with a labor, official or statutory relationship with the Cantabria Public Health System, with the University of Cantabria as a professor linked to healthcare activity or, failing that, as staff of a IDIVAL research group.

According to the criterio of emerging researcher of the Strategic Action in Health of the Carlos III Health Institute: the principal investigators must not be more than forty-five years old and have never accessed funding as principal investigator in a project obtained through a call for national or international competitive grants, or in the IDIVAL Next-Val, Prim-val, or Inn-Val calls. Training specialists are excluded.

NEXT-VAL research projects will have a minimum duration of one year and a maximum of two. The maximum amount to be awarded per project is € 25,000. The funding granted may fully or partially finance the project for which the grant is requested. The maximum allowable travel expense in the execution of each project will be € 3,000.

Required documentation: (see bases)

– Standardized CVA of each of the members of the research team.

– Report of the research project.

Application evaluation:

a) Assessment of the research team. It will be valued up to a maximum of 30 points: scientific-technical history; previous results obtained in the scope of the proposal and complementarity of the team. The participation of residents of the mentoring program or post-MIR Valdecilla contracts in the research team, the belonging of the main researcher to Primary Care or Nursing or to other areas underrepresented in IDIVAL research will be especially valued.

b) Project evaluation. A maximum of 70 points will be valued: quality, feasibility, relevance, translational interest, applicability of the project, capacity of the project to generate improvements in the knowledge of the bases of pathogenesis, in prevention, diagnosis, treatment of diseases, safety of the patient. Alignment with the needs and interests of the Cantabrian Public Health System and potential socioeconomic impact of the project. Those studies carried out on patients will be especially valued.

Application deadlines: February 15 to March 15, 2020.


Note: The execution of these funds will be carried out in accordance with the IDIVAL Project Management Instructions.

More detailed information on the call in the following BOC link: Official Gazette of Cantabria (download pdf)

More information on the IDIVAL aid portal: IDIVAL aid portal (link)
 

The PsicAP project is the largest mental health care clinical trial ever conducted in Spain to date, about the efficacy of psychological treatment for people with emotional disorders in Primary Care (PC). The study has just published its results in the journal Psychological Medicine. The results confirm that adding a group psychological treatment of 7 transdiagnosis sessions manages to triple the percentage of people who reliably recover with respect to the usual treatment in PC. These effects are maintained 12 months after the intervention ends. The therapeutic effects are not limited to symptoms of anxiety, depression and somatic symptoms without organic explanation, but a significant difference was also observed in favor of the experimental treatment in the different aspects of functioning and quality of life evaluated.

The PsicAP was conducted inin 22 health centers throughout Spain, with 1,061 adult patients with emotional disorders were enrolled., including the one in Camargo Costa de Cantabria. The project is led by Dr. Antonio Cano Vindel, professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, and has the participation of Dr. César González-Blanch, a researcher at HUMV-IDIVAL, who has contributed in part to the financing of the study to through PRIMVAL and INNVAL grants.

It is estimated that approximately one in three PC visits has a mental health problem as the main reason, the most common being anxiety and depression problems of mild-moderate intensity, but which have an appreciable negative impact on different areas of functioning and quality of life. In these cases, the treatment recommended by clinical guidelines is psychological treatment. However, given the absence of clinical psychologists in PC, the only way to access psychological treatment is through referral to Mental Health Units for specialized care, which is why only a very small part of people receive it. The PsicAP study tried to verify the efficacy of adding in PC a psychological treatment designed for this context, that is, brief, group and for people with different emotional disorders of mild-moderate intensity.

Together, the results indicate the convenience of facilitating early access to psychological treatments in PC in order to achieve a greater recovery for people with the most prevalent mental health problems in PC. This would not only be a benefit for patients but also for society as a whole given the high social costs associated with the most prevalent mental disorders, mainly derived from temporary or permanent incapacity for work. However, the multiprofessional PC teams in Cantabria do not yet include the figure of a clinical psychologist who can facilitate access to this type of psychological treatment without depending on referral to specialized, which is saturated.

Ref.: Cano-Vindel, A., Muñoz-Navarro, R., Moriana, J., Ruiz-Rodríguez, P., Medrano, L., & González-Blanch, C. (2021). Transdiagnostic group cognitive behavioural therapy for emotional disorders in primary care: The results of the PsicAP randomized controlled trial. Psychological Medicine, 1-13. doi:10.1017/S0033291720005498

The Marqués de Valdecilla Research Institute (IDIVAL) organizes from April 12 to May 13 a Course on Trends in Clinical Research aimed at all those personnel from the biosanitary environment of Cantabria who have an interest in clinical research.

The aim is to give to these professionals the specific knowledge for participation in clinical trials and interpretation from the point of view of teams involved in their development and organization from the perspective of different medical and surgical specialties.

Online training. The zoom platform will be used for teaching this course. .

Teaching material: Each teacher will prepare a chapter related to the subject taught. All the chapters will be edited as a pdf book.

Duration: 32 hours, 2 hours per session, from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. from Monday to Wednesday.

Number of places: 100

Accreditation: Pending accreditation by the Continuing Education Commission for healthcare professionals in Cantabria. A certificate of attendance will be provided to all attendees.

Continuous training by the University of Cantabria: This course is part of the continuous training program of the University of Cantabria.



Please make the registration through the following links by completing the form. Applications will be prioritized in order of registration.

Registration period: from March 1 to April 1

Link for registration:

https://aplicacionesidival.idival.org/ConvocatoriasPropias/es/Convocatorias/VerConvocatoria?Id=771

The course is free for IDIVAL and Cantabria Health System staff.

For any questions or clarification, you can contact us through the e-mail Proyectos1@idival.org

Course program

BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards recognize fundamental contributions in a broad array of areas of scientific knowledge, technology, humanities and artistic creation.

The disciplines and domains of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards are:

1. Basic Sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics)
2. Biology and Biomedicine
3. Information and Communication Technologies
4. Ecology and Conservation Biology
5. Climate Change
6. Economics, Finance and Management
7. Humanities and Social Sciences
8. Music and Opera

In Humanities and Social Sciences, the award will alternate annually between these two disciplinary domains, with this fourteenth edition dedicated to the Social Sciences.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards consist of 400,000 euros, a diploma and a commemorative artwork in each of their eight categories.

In the event that an award is shared by more than one person, its monetary amount will be divided equally among all recipients.

Candidates may be one or more natural persons of any nationality, without limitation of number, that have made independent or convergent contributions to a given advance, whether due to a formal collaboration (with the nominees belonging to one or more groups) or parallel working. The awards are also open to scientific or cultural organizations that can be collectively credited with exceptional contributions to scientific knowledge, cultural creation or the fight against climate change.

Awards may not be granted posthumously.

Self-nomination is not permitted.

Any scientific or cultural organization or institution can submit nominations, following their own internal procedures. Among them:

• Scientific or artistic societies and organizations
• National and regional academies of science or culture
• Public or private R&D centers
• University schools, departments or institutes and research or teaching institutes
• Hospital departments and biomedical research centers
• Schools of music
• Orchestras, orchestra associations, opera theaters and opera associations
• Public agencies and supranational, national or regional organizations substantially engaged in analysis and/or activities relating to climate change
• Other scientific, cultural and environmental organizations

Winners of the Nobel Prize in any of its categories are likewise eligible to nominate, as are past winners of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards.

The BBVA Foundation may also invite nominations from researchers and cultural creators that have made outstanding contributions in their respective fields, establishing consultative or advisory panels to this end.

The same organization, institution or individual nominator may put forward more than one candidate without limitation of number, but no candidate may be nominated in more than one award category.

The nomination period will open on January 1, 2021 and conclude at 23:00 GMT on June 30 of the same year.

More information (link)

Based on the regulations established by the regional (BOC, decree 18/2020 of March 15) and national authorities in the current situation of the COVID19 pandemic, IDIVAL support and research staff will maximize telework options until further notice.

In this context, visits to IDIVAL facilities are restricted.

Support services will be carried out electronically. To do this, contact the staff of the Central Support Unit by email when necessary, in any of the areas:

•  Projects
• Contracts and agreements
• Billing
• Labor hiring
• Technological services
• Innovation

Only when there is no other alternative and the support cannot be postponed, will face-to-face support be given.

In this regard, the mailing list of the support staff is available on our website at the following link: https://www.idival.org/es/Soporte/Directorio-de-contactos.

Published in the Official Gazette of Cantabria on December 29, 2020, the Regional call 2021 to drive biomedical research includes 11 research support programs for an estimated grant amount of more than € 1M, aimed at promoting research, innovation and intrapreneurship in the biosanitary field of Cantabria.

The 10 programs as a whole prioritize talent, internationalization and innovation: contracts and promotion.

Line of contracts that includes the following programs:

-Tec-Val: internship contracts for support technicians for research platforms to be developed at the IDIVAL Central Support Unit.

– Ges-Val: contracts for research management practices to be developed at the IDIVAL Central Support Unit.

Promotion line that includes the following programs:

Four project programs:

-Next-Val: aimed at emerging researchers.

– Inn-Val: for the development of research projects.

– Prim-Val: for primary care projects.

– Trans-Val: for transition of National Plan projects.

Two talent attraction programs:

– Mentoring: junior program for new residents.

– Inplant: senior program for new heads of department or section who come to the Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital from other centers.

A facilitation program for clinical researchers

– Intensification of modality A.

– Mode B intensification or self-intensification.

A support program for research groups (Support)

It should be noted that other promotion programs will have their own calls, such as the López Albo-Valdecilla Post-Residence program that will be called by the Cantabria Public Health System directly and the pre-doctoral contract program that will be jointly called by IDIVAL and the University of cantabria.

The deadlines for submitting applications for the different programs will be as follows:

More Information  (link)